Alright, for the recording, here we are. It is July 17th, 2023. This is class one of ACI Course one, the beginning of a new series hopefully to take us all the way through from ignorant human being to totally enlightened being in this lifetime, is my plan for you if you stick around long enough to do it. 

(Usual opening)

Let's gather our minds here as we usually do, please. 

Bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again. 

Now bring to mind that being who for you is a manifestation of ultimate love, ultimate compassion, ultimate wisdom.

See them there with you. They're gazing at you with their unconditional love for you, smiling at you with their holy great compassion. 

Their wisdom is 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. 

Think about how much you would like to be able to help them and how wonderful it will be when the ways we can help them will include helping them learn to stop their distress forever. We believe it's possible. We hope it's possible. And even the little bit of emptiness and karma we understand hints to us that it must be possible. 

And so grow that wish. Grow it into a longing, into an intention, even into a determination. Then turn your mind back to that precious holy guide. We know that they know what we need to know, what we need to learn, what we need to do to become the one who can help that other in that deep and ultimate way. 

And so we ask them, „Please, please teach us that. 

And they are so happy that we've asked of course they agree. 

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

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

Here is the great earth 

filled with fragrant incense and covered with a blanket of flowers. 

The Great Mountain, the 4 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 Ratnamandalakam 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 I reach Buddhahood for the sake of every living being. 

I go for refuge until I am enlightened 

to the Buddha, the Dharma and the highest community 

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

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

I go for refuge until I am enlightened 

to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest community 

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

May each and every existing being reach their total awakening

for the benefit of every other being. 

So let me read to you the Three Principal Paths, the text we will be studying. 

Just listen, you're not responsible to remember any of it yet. Watch for your Aha‘s because all of you have studied this stuff. But we're starting from the beginning, but not at the beginning, right? Because of who this audience is. 

So the context of this set of verses is that it's found inside Lama Tsongkapa’s Lam Rim Chen Mo. When one of his students..what was his name…the friar from Tsako..we'll get there officially. He went out to east Tibet, far away from where the Lama was teaching. His assignment was to teach people and open monasteries. He gets out there and he goes, ‘What am I supposed to do’? 

So Je Tsongkapa sends him this. Says ‚Teach them this‘. 

So here's what we got taught when we were in eastern Tibet, new to learning the details of Buddhism that we had been brought up with. We’re yak herder kids in Eastern Tibet and this monk guy, he's teaching us this. 

You're ready, so crack open your head. Let it pour in. 

The Three Principle Paths 

I bow to all the high and holy lamas.

As far as I am able I’ll explain

The essence of all high teachings of the Victors,

The path that all their holy sons commend,

The entry point for the fortunate seeking freedom.

Listen with a pure mind, fortunate ones

Who have no craving for the pleasures of life,

And who, to make leisure and fortune meaningful, strive

To turn their minds to the path which pleases the Victors.

There's no way to end without pure renunciation,

This striving for pleasant results in the ocean of life.

It's because of their hankering life as well that beings

Are fettered, so seek renunciation first.

Leisure and fortune are hard to find, life‘s not long;

Think it constantly, stop desire for this life.

Think over and over how deeds and their fruits never fail,

And the cycle is suffering: stop desire for the future.

When you've meditated thus and feel not even

A moment's wish for the good things of cyclic life,

And when you begin to think both night and day

Of achieving freedom, you've found renunciation.

Renunciation though, can never bring

The total bliss of matchless Buddhahood

Unless it’s bound by the purest wish; and so,

The wise seek the high wish for enlightenment.

They’re swept along on four fierce river currents,

Chained up tight in past deeds, hard to undo,

Stuffed in a steel cage of grasping "self",

Smothered in the pitch-black ignorance.

In limitless rounds they're born, and in their births

They are tortured by three sufferings without break;

Think how your mothers feel, think of what's happening

To them: try to develop this highest wish.

You may master renunciation and the wish,

But unless you have the wisdom perceiving reality

You cannot cut the root of cyclic life.

Make efforts in ways then to perceive interdependence.

A person’s entered the path that pleases the Buddhas

When for all objects in the cycle or beyond,

He sees that cause and effect can never fail,

And when for him they lose all solid appearance.

You have yet to realize the thought of the Able

As long as two ideas seem to you disparate:

The appearance of things—infallible interdependence;

And emptiness—beyond taking any position.

At some point they no longer alternate, come together;

Just seeing that interdependence never fails

Brings realization that destroys how you hold to objects,

And then your analysis with view is complete.

In addition, the appearance prevents the existence extreme;

Emptiness that of non-existence, and if

You see how emptiness shows in cause and effect

You'll never be stolen off by extreme views.

When you've grasped as well as I the essential points

Of each of the three principal paths explained,

Then go into isolation, my child, make mighty

Efforts, and quickly win your ultimate wish.

So we have a lot to talk about, to clarify what he means. This being the first course.

When you deliver the first course to your group of students, assuming they're brand new, tell them the background of ACI and where it came from. 

That Geshe Michael started teaching while he was studying for his Geshe degree because that's how he would learn better. And that just by serendipity somebody asked them to be recorded and then because they were recorded, they were available to become correspondence courses and available to more people than those just living in New York City at the time. 

It evolved into the ACI we know today, which took 30 years to come about. 

30 years in the making of what Ale and Claire are running. So yay! It happened in our lifetime, yay! 

Also, what you do for your students is clarify what you need them to do to facilitate them completing the course. 

Like: do your homeworks and quizzes before your next class. 

Be prepared to show them to me. 

Grade your own paper. 

And then with the final, we'll swap finals and give each other the opportunity to get that merit as well. 

Then submit all those papers, including one meditation for each class at least. 

I will submit to the Dean and you will get your certificates. Yay. 

I don't want you to waste your time. I want you to make completion seeds, and I want you to review the material enough times so that the imprints are strong. 

You already know that, but you would say that to your students. 

So I'm gonna launch right into class because you already know me. 

But I do want to say, there's an advantage to hearing this beginner's information with a beginner’s mind. I don't want you to pretend you don't know anything and pretend you hear it for the first time, but I ask you to try to hear it as if you didn't know what it was. And then let yourself go, ‘I understand it at this level’, so that you can understand it at a deeper level. I'm hoping to take us all to that deeper level together because of where we're starting from, but I don't want to assume too much. 

We're going back to the beginning on purpose. I'm gonna try and weave it together. I've never done that before. We'll see how it goes. 

OK, then. We are studying LAM TSO NAM SUM

LAM=PATH

SUM=THREE

TSO NAM = PRINCIPLES

In English there is principle and there is principal, it's spelled differently. 

There's principal PAL and there's principle PLE, and I've always gotten confused which one’s which. According to Geshela, this one is the PLE.

But what it means is that we're talking about three different principles, not three qualities of the path. Three different paths that are necessary for us to transform ourselves and our world from suffering beings to ultimately happy ones. 

So when we use the term path - LAM -  it is ‚we are going somewhere‘, it is ‚we are making progress‘. 

But more importantly, LAM - path - means realizations that we gained. 

Realizations means something that wasn't true for us before, is now true beyond a shadow of a doubt. Which we could say means ‚by personal experience‘.

But that's kind of fishy because we could say ‚I have personal experience that my key turns my car on, so that must be true‘. 

Somebody would have to keep asking me, does it happen every single time? Have you ever turned the key and your car hasn't started? It's like, ‘Oh yeah’. Okay, then it's not truth for you. 

Find something else that you've personally experienced, that's always true. 

It's hard to really say a realization comes from personal experience if we're ignorant in that personal experience. But that's how realizations come about.

Something we experienced that we didn't ever experience before, and then something about the experience changes us in some way. 

That's what we mean by a realization. 

They say that technically ‚real realizations‘ only happen in a deep state of meditation. But I'm not so sure that's true. I mean, I've had one and I was not meditating. I was crying my eyes out. But same effect. So, like all these little… I'm not supposed to give you those kinds of conundrums this early, but because of who you are, you're getting them. 

LAM

Three principle realizations we need to experience in order to transform ourselves. So now we've really got the proper context of what we're working for. 

It was written by our hero Je Tsongkapa Lobsang Drakpa 1357 - 1419. We know Lobsang Drakpa. 

We know how special he was. We know that his KAM, like his purpose in that life, was to clarify the teachings by comparing the different traditions within Tibet with the Indian tradition that in his time wasn't practiced so much in India anymore. 

By using logic and debate he weeded out the gross and subtle errors that had crept in as it goes from generation to generation. 

He did that in such a way that everybody admired him.

We could imagine somebody coming to our tradition and saying, ‘I'm going to clean up your tradition because some of it is mistaken’. 

And, [we’d be] ‘Oh yeah, you just try it’ or ‘Yeah, right, take it somewhere else’. 

We wouldn't…we're not gonna believe that. 

But his method appeared to be such that people were happy. And we ended up with this whole fourth tradition within Tibetan Buddhism, the Gelukpa tradition. 

So there was no Gelukpa tradition before Je Tsongkapa. And he didn't grow up saying, ‘I'm going to start my own tradition’, right? Because you know where that would have gone. 

But it ended up that way because his teaching was so succinct and so clean and so verifiable that people followed him. 

There came a point where he realized it was time for monasteries to be built and people to be taught. So he was sitting there with his main disciples, [asking] ‘Will somebody go out to Eastern Tibet and start monasteries and teach out there?’ 

And all his close students are doing the ‘Don't look at me’ thing because they didn't want to be away from him. 

And this one guy, not such a great student, but there amongst them, he goes, ‘I'll do it’. 

I already told you he goes, ‘So what am I gonna do when I'm out there?’ 

So then he gets personal correspondence with Je Tsongkapa because he's so far away. In a sense, maybe he ended up closer to Lama Tsongkapa than those that were right near him that never actually got to talk with him. 

I mean, Elly, Venerable Jigme used to say, ‘Yeah, we spend all kinds of time with Geshe Michael, but I never talked to him. I don't get my questions answered. He's busy with stuff. I'm just driving’. 

And there's something to be said for getting stuff from osmosis, but maybe a far away relationship is closer than a really close one. Not saying you know one or the other, but consider… 

[Luisa] Tsongkapa’s student went to work to India or to Tibet? Was Je Tsongkapa in India or Tibet?

[Lama Sarahni] He is in Tibet. 

Alright so these three principle realizations that we will be training in are:

NYEN JUNG

JANG SEM

YANG DAKPAY TAWA

Please say those words so that Tibetan language is to be heard by others including us. 

Geshela says,when we master these three, we have mastered all of Buddha's teachings. That's saying something. We've heard from the Source of All my Good, one of the very short Lam Rims that if we understand that Lam Rim deeply, we understand all of it. 

So these concise little packages, they are complete if we know what's in them. 

So we take years to pull them apart and then we get back and we pack them all together like we pack light. 

Did we get to it recently? Pack light, take off now, right? 

With these just short, succinct verses. Because we know how to unravel them. 

In the past, Geshe Michael and others have said, if you were ever lost and alone on a desert island with no books and no computer and no phone, it might be wise to have in your mind the Heart Sutra, Source of All my Good, Three Principle Paths and maybe a little bit from Master Shantideva. You could do what you had to do on a desert island until you got saved by just using what you know in your own heart.

So I will encourage you, since you are not new students, if you have not already, to choose one of those texts to memorize in your language of choice. And someday, we will gather and we'll share them. We'll recite them so that we can plant seeds strongly. It‘s not a requirement for this class, don't worry about that. 

So NYEN JUNG is this first state of mind that we're cultivating, but it's not like we finished cultivating it and we move on. We grow it, and then it facilitates growing this other one, and then this other one. And as all three are growing, our renunciation gets even deeper. 

It kind of takes all of them together to get all of them fully. 

1. NYEN JUNG - Renunciation

Geshela says Renunciation is that state of mind that is disgust with this suffering life. Finally recognizing that nothing can go right here.

Even our best days end, leaving us wanting for more. Even if we have a whole lifetime of best days in a human realm, it's going to end in one way or another.

At the very best we die. But maybe that's actually at the very worst, because then we never do anything to learn about where it comes from. When things are going great, we're not going, ‚Gee, what's going on here? Why are things going so well?‘ 

It's only when things are disastrous, or dissatisfactory or we get depressed enough that we start wondering, that we go, ‚What's wrong here? How come I can't make it work?‘ 

So kind of the better our lives, the harder it is to be motivated to stay on our path until we reach a certain level of understanding. 

Then we're learning how to use both—unpleasant things and pleasant things—and we've sort of gotten over the hump at that point.

So to generate NYEN JUNG - renunciation - if we have enough goodness to have a teacher and to be interested in what they have to say, they start out with pointing out how life is nothing but suffering. And it's like Debbie Downer, right? 

Who wants to go to a spiritual teaching where the first thing you hear is: ‚You think you're kind of happy? You are so mistaken. You just wait and see.‘

But you are sophisticated, so we could do that here. 

Renunciation only comes up when we're questioning and wanting something different and seem like we're up against a wall at figuring out what to do. 

Truly getting this sense that this human life, it's better than animal, but there's gotta be something better. There's gotta be… That's the beginning of our renunciation. 

So they point out how obvious suffering is obviously unpleasant. But then they asked you, ‚Do you really believe that you could have a life where you would never get a headache? Where you would never sprain your ankle or you would never lose a job? Where nobody would ever argue with you?‘

If we said honestly, ‚No, I don't really expect life to be like that. I just would expect me not to get so upset about it.‘ 

But then the words they use in this scripture is learning to have disgust for this life. That seems pretty harsh, disgust with this life, I mean, why would we get out of bed if we've cultivated disgust for this life? ‚I'm just not going to do anything. So disgusting, I can't get out of bed.‘

That's not what we're trying to cultivate here. 

It doesn't mean not to enjoy the good things that come. 

It does not mean, cultivate bad things to come. 

Disgust for life. What's getting [it] more clear is that our constant choices for what to do next are mistaken. So as we dig deeper into renunciation, what we will really reach a disgust for is this wicked ignorance that drives everything that we do, ignorance and self cherishing. 

Which to a beginning class I can't say that, because we don't even know what those things are yet. But here renunciation is, ‚Oh, I'm not ever going to drive my car again.‘ 

Because it makes it too easy. 

Or ‚I'm not gonna drink that mango lassie because it tastes too good.‘ 

Not like that at all. It's catching the, ‚Oh. I think the pleasure comes from it.‘ 

And that's so much more subtle to be disgusted with that. 

With that automatic blaming the thing and the quality for being in it, coming at me. 

So renunciation is a much more subtle thing than saying, Oh yeah, I want to go become a monk or a nun, and put on robes, and live in a monastery, and only go out during summer vacation and go say hi to Mom, and then run back to the monastery to avoid everything.

There is power in that. There are whole traditions in which we train ourselves in that kind of self-discipline and they're valuable.

This lineage of teachings says it's not enough for reaching ultimate happiness, it is enough for reaching personal freedom from mental affliction. So if that's our goal, then our renunciation is renunciating the usual successes of worldly life. 

But if Nirvana is only part of our goal, then even our renunciation, what we mean by renunciation, is different. You see? 

So renunciation: Getting sick and tired of being sick and tired and nothing working right, and good things wearing out and bad things happening, and being out of control like you don't ever know what's going to happen next. 

2. JANG SEM - Bodhichitta

We know JANG SEM. JANG means Bodhi, Bodhichitta. It means literally Buddha mind. So we do want to realize Buddha mind. But that's not what the term JANG SEM means. JANG SEM means making real for us the wish for reaching Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings. 

So when we see that this world's broken, I want to learn to fix it, there does appear to be a way to fix it. That's true for everybody. Instead of just: It's true for me, I will work with it. 

We can't make people go from ‚It's true for me‘ - to ‚It's true for everybody‘. 

Those who have the seeds, it will occur to them. 

Those who don't have the seeds, they'll go, ‚No, you're nuts. I'm not responsible for everybody. It's a big enough job to stop my own mental afflictions. I'll do that. And if I can help others along the way, great. At least I've stopped harming them.‘

But when we have those other seeds, it's like, ‚Wow. Everybody could do it too. Not just human, but my pet bunny? That mosquito that's been buzzing around me all day but won't stop and eat? I'd be happy to feed it, but it won't sit still long enough. It's so agitated, the poor thing.‘ 

Every being - without leaving a single one out. JANG SEM. 

Bringing that to a realization involves that heart opening experience that Geshela tells us about. And is added to or cultivated by our understanding of karma and emptiness. 

3. YANG DAKPAY TAWA - Correct view

That's where YANG DAKPAY TAWA comes in because YANG DAKPAY TAWA is correct world view. The third realization we cultivate which is this direct experience of ultimate reality that comes hot on the heels of the direct experience of dependently originated reality with awareness of it being that. Because we are directly aware of dependent originated reality right now. 

Deceptive reality. We're not aware that it's what is dependently originated from is our own past deeds that made the mental imprints that are ripening as what we're experiencing. But what we experience when we experience dependent origination directly won't be any different than what we're experiencing now. 

It's knowing where it comes from. Experiencing where it comes from, really is what makes the difference between deceptive reality and the direct perception of dependent origination reality. 

It's our interpretation that's different. 

And then because of the power of that, if we run and jump on our meditation cushion, they say, and go deeply enough withdrawing our sense activities with that as our meditation object, we will be able to penetrate into ‘and nothing exists in any other way than that’. Into that direct experience. And coming out of that, we have the 16 aspects of the Four Arya Truths and we have YANG DAKPAY TAWA for the first time. We now have that correct worldview, even though we go back to perceiving our world in the old way. We cultivate the ability to perceive it again, to live by what we know, perceive it again, live by what we know, perceive it again as we evolve. 

It takes these three. We are not likely to learn what we need to learn to be able to recognize that experience of the seeds ripening for what they are and to use that to see emptiness directly if we haven't had some training. 

We're not likely to get training deeply enough to bring that about if we haven't renunciated our usual ordinary what we're supposed to do as a human life. 

So you have renunciated. You've already studied, you spend lots of time on this stuff. Check out your own level of renunciation so far. 

The things that you've given up, not because somebody said you had to, but because they just fell away. Because your interest is going in this different direction. 

That and rejoice in those shifts that you've experienced already. 

There is no helpfulness in pushing our renunciation faster than - I want to say is comfortable, but that's not quite right. We do want to push. But not force ourselves beyond our capacity. Because we'll give up if we fool ourselves into some strict kind of renunciation, thinking we're doing a good job, but in our heart we resent it. We won't be able to maintain as we learn these different principles. We'll see that's a little piece of my behavior that's holding me back. I'm ready to address it now. And then work with it for a while. 

So renunciation, the wish to reach total Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings and the correct worldview that makes that possible, that shows that it's possible and inevitable. Those 3 interweave, and they all get richer and richer.

Pabongka Rinpoche, Dechen Nyingpo (1878-1941)

So we need our lineage. And we'll hear it multiple times through the course of our ACI‘s as we go further and further back in our lineage. But, Je Tsongkapa‘s ended up founding the Gelukpa lineage. Gelukpa lineage has three monasteries, if I understand properly: Sera Mey, Sera Jey and Drepung, is that right? 

And then within each of those monasteries, they have different houses, a little like clans.

Each house has a house teacher and that house teacher receives students starting at age 7. They keep their students I think up until they earn their Geshe degrees or get their assignments. Not all monks in the Sera monastery go on to earn their Geshe. That's up to them if they want to do that. 

They can choose to be the cook. They can choose to be something else. They can choose to devote to something else. Those who continue and pursue all the way to Geshe degree, as I understand it, stay in their main house until they earn that and go on. Sometimes they'll get handed to a different teacher. That does happen.

In our lineage we have Pabongka Rinpoche, Dechen Nyingpo. His dates are 1878 to 1941. Pabongka Rinpoche is a Geshe from the Gyalrong house. So Geshe Michael's Geshe degree is that level of Geshe degree. Just at that level of a house Geshe. Versus Khen Rinpoche, who was Hlarampa Geshe, which means he debated his college, he debated other colleges, he debated all the monks, and he and his buddy ended up winning the gold brick. 

They finished highest in their class of all the students of Tibet who finished that year. Not just their own monastery. 

Pabongka Rinpoche was our house, the Gyalrong house. 

His claim to fame, what we know him for, was his gift to teach to lay people. He was teaching in such a way that you didn't need that high intellectual training in order to follow what he was teaching. 

And he got a lot of grief for it. But he was really good at it and he inspired people, and lay people practiced and gained realizations. 

So he's in our house. We're in his house. He's like, if Geshe Michael is dad, Khen Rinpoche is Granddad, Trijang Rinpoche is great Granddad, Pabongka Rinpoche is great great for us. 

Pabongka Rinpoche had a lot of great students, one of which is Trijang Rinpoche whose dates are 1901 to 1981. He was an extraordinary practitioner, student, and teacher and was one of the tutors of the current Dalai Lama. 

So when the Dalai Lama was a child he had to get training, and they assigned the brightest of the brightest to teach. He had two tutors, Trijang Rinpoche was one of them. Trijang Rinpoche had students, one of whom was Khen Rinpoche, Sera Mey Hlarampa Geshe Lobsang Tharchin, Geshe Michael’s Llama. 

His dates were 1921 to 2004. And then he had students. Art Ankle is one, Geshe Michael is another. Others besides those.

And Geshe Michael has students. All of us are among them. 

So we can see our immediate lineage. 

Going back, there's a few between Pabongka Rinpoche and Je Tsongkapa of course, because late 1800s to 1300s you've got how many generations? I can't do that in my head, 6 or 8. 

Yet actually we know who they are. I don't know off the top of my head, but we know who they are. We could go this, and this, and this. Just like our family tree. Which is pretty cool that we can know that. 

Luisa you had a question and I ignored you. Please forgive me. 

[Luisa] I just wanted to ask if we are teaching this to new people. For the part like when you are going to correct worldview and so then you have to explain the pen, or how do you do that? And how do you explain to new people what it means? 

[Lama Sarahni] Right. For instance, I did this class this morning to new people. So I think what were new people, and I just used the term correct worldview and about knowing where things come from, but we didn't do the pen - yet. 

What's going to happen as we go through class, that correct worldview will come up more specifically. And it's like, ‘Let me give an example’. That's when you pull out the pen and have their attention. 

So yes, we have those little tools. And when it becomes appropriate, that's when you pull it out. I don't know how to say, how to know. But you will. You will know. Either by the look on their face. Like, ‚OK, let me explain‘. Or it'll just be like your conversation funnels it. 

That actual example doesn't come up in the teachings until we get to the CHU BAP explanation. Do you remember the water explanation with the three beings? You know the three beings in the basement with the glass of water in front. 

That wasn't until course 12 or even 15 maybe. That's where the pen example comes from. But Geshe Michael shows us the example. He is, ‚Don't wait till of course 12 or whatever it is to show that example‘, although technically that's Highest Middle Way. And even if we were starting in the monastery, we wouldn't reach learning Highest Middle Way till we've already been studying 12 years. So thank you Geshe Michael for your insight to tell us the punchline at the beginning. Because it makes all the rest worth working on for impatient people like me in the West that want McDonald's everything. Something about our seeds that it's like, ‚Just tell me! Just tell me! I need it right now. I'll do it right now. Just tell me.‘

And if it were that easy, they would do it. Of course it's not. 

I don't know, I also have a group where we are studying Arya Nagarjuna. And Arya Nagarjunas’s text „Wisdom“, he never gives the punchline. He just says, ‚Not that, not that, not that, not that.‘ 

And if we didn't have the punchline? I know I’d give up on Arya Nagarjuna a long time ago. But knowing the punchline, it's like, Oh, he's pointing it out every time he says, ‚Not that‘, we're supposed to go that instead. Because we already know. Thank you, Geshe Michael. 

We're in Geshe Michael‘s lineage, so we get to do that too. For those who are interested from us. But as you're aware, we can give that pen example and for some people, it doesn't hold water for them, right? 

You can lose people, or they look at you like you are completely crazy. ‘You're just nuts’. You know? It's not obvious. Then it's like, all right, God bless. Let's take a different tack. Do we believe we reap what we sow? Yeah, OK, let's work with that. And we can't force anybody. If we don't have the seeds for that pen thing to make sense, it's not going to make sense. Hopefully we have the seeds for them to be interested to hear it again and again. But even though we don't. We don't know. Because technically that's empty, right? Otherwise everybody would understand it, and believe it. 

I told you about the monk who went out to eastern Tibet, who is why we have this teaching. 

NGAWANG DRAKPA TSAKO WANGPO

TSAKO = the place in Tibet he was from

NGAWANG DRAKPA = his monk‘s name

WANGPO = the power guy, but Geshela translates it as the friar from Tsako, like monk brother

The friar from Tsako is what it says on your answer key. Just that guy's name. 

Who received this as a teaching for what to teach.

(Break)

(Notes from a question in the breaktime about the history of the scriptures and on how it comes Sanskrit got lost and mainly texts are in tibetan:

Je Tsongkapa is in Tibet, and then he sends this monk to the east Tibet. But Lord Buddha was born in India. It's the teachings that went to Tibet. And they seeped in over time. I think the main person who took it was Padmasambhava and then Lord Atisha. And we'll learn all about that. Because the scriptures that we find are in Tibetan and not in Sanskrit. And this is confusing for me.So the original ones in India were in Sanskrit. And then, as Tibet was a Pagan country which means that there were multiple gods, nature, spirits, they sacrifice and so forth. I don't recall the story of the top of my head, but seeped into Tibet and the people were attracted to it and they started to learn. They didn't even have a written language. So they made a written language. And as teachings were brought, more and more teachers coming and learning, they took on the task of translating the text from Sanskrit to Tibetan. 

That was happening around 1000 AD time frame. In Tibet during the Lojong. They were translated. So it turns out they translated a lot. Not all of it, but a lot of it. Almost the complete collection of the Buddhist teachings got translated through the years into Tibetan and then in the course of that the libraries in India got wiped out. 

So then the most complete set of Buddhist teachings were in the Tibetan collection, in Tibetan. That means the Sanskrit had disappeared. Yeah, they apparently have very little of the Buddhist Sanskrit teachings in Sanskrit. What they do have has been retranslated from Tibetan back to Sanskrit. Then from Tibet, it also went into Mongolia. And Mongolians also made a written language and they did some translating as well. As Mongolia got really, really big they took a collection of those texts out into their country—which went as far as Russia—and that's how a whole collection ended up in the Sankt Petersburg library. Because that was included in the Mongolian country for a while. And then, when the Mongols left again, all that was just I guess in the basement somewhere. And ALL was able to find it.) 

(Part 2 of class)

The meditation assignment for this class is about renunciation. I admit I didn‘t look at it, I just have it in my notes. You are supposed to consider renunciation and your level of it and what you think it means. Again, for beginners they don‘t necessarily have a meditation practice, whatever they believe what meditation is, is probably different than what we will teach and so rather than say, ‚You have to meditate properly‘, just say, ‚Sit down and think about this topic an we will call it meditation.‘

Start your motivation with ‚I want to learn something I can use to help people.‘ And then just think about what we learned in class about renunciation and what level of it do you think you already have.

And then he went on to say that to investigate more deeply into our level of renunciation, we need to know why it is that this life is so bad that we need to learn renunciating. The verse said ‚I wanna give up wishing desire for this life and desire for future life.‘ What else is there than this life and future life and I am not supposed to desire even for future life? Clearly the words are not literal. They mean something else about desire for this life or desire for future life. And we are going to see that it‘s ignorant desire. In the secret way we cultivate the desire to transform in this lifetime.

So we need as much of this lifetime as we can to increase our chances of being successful. But that‘s not desire for this lifetime. Because what they mean by desire for this lifetime is desire for this ignorant broken lifetime. And who wants more of that? No, thank you. So understanding the context of the words becomes important for this set of verses to become inspiring instead of just confusing.

So lamas teach the four great sufferings, right? 

We have all these different lists of sufferings that we're going to learn. This is a good one called the Four Great Sufferings - KE GA NA CHI

KE GA NA CHI - the four great sufferings

KE = forced rebirth

CHI = death

GA = aging

NA = illness

The four great sufferings of the desire realm. 

Is it a suffering to get born? 

Is it a suffering to get a human life? 

Is it a suffering to die? 

Is it a suffering to get old? You won't know till you get there. 

Is it a suffering to get sick? Yes. We can say yes for that one. 

But is there anybody that you've ever known or heard of that benefited from being sick? That does happen. So it's not being sick that's bad. 

CHI is dying. We say, Oh, you know, somebody who's in terrible, terrible pain and they finally die. They're out of their pain. They're in a better place, and I hope so. 

Getting a human life, birth into a human life. Human life is the best one for a spiritual training ground, they say. It's got enough distress, and enough pleasure to keep us on our path. 

The other realms:

The higher realms there's too much pleasure. It never occurs to them that they need to do something to perpetuate it, or that they could do something to perpetuate it. And those lesser than human, life is too hard to question, to wonder, to try to change behavior. Animals don't have the capacity to choose a new behavior. We can train them to do a new behavior and that's great seeds for them. But they themselves cannot decide to behave in a different way. 

Hungry ghosts are too hungry. And hell realm beings are in too much pain. 

Humans have a little bit of all of that.

And the blessing of being able to choose our morality. It's what‘s part of what it is to be human, is to have that. So at the very basis we check a forced birth, aging, illness, death. Do I believe it's going on constantly in me? Is it suffering? What is it that's broken about it? That's the question. 

What is it that's broken about that system? Because that's what we're wanting to renunciate. How are we perpetuating the broken system? 

So the idea here for beginners is just to start to think, Do I really want to change? Are there things I wanna not experience anymore? Do I really want to be on my spiritual path? 

And then if and when we reach the point where our answer is yes, then the next topic that comes up is, So how do I be a good student? Like what's necessary for me to be able to learn what I need to learn, to make progress before my time wears out. 

3 Problems of a pot

And so that brings up that topic, the three problems of the pot. 

Three ways we should not be as students on our spiritual path, 3 problems we should avoid having. They're called the three problems of the pot. Later, we're going to get to the three qualities of a good student. Which is the positive side.

So we've heard the three problems of the pot. 

It's like this teapot and if the teapot has a lid on it you can't put your tea leaves in and pour hot water into it. You can't make tea with a teapot that's got a lid on it from the beginning. It means don't be a student whose mind is closed. You already have an idea of what you want to learn or you're listening to the teachings to confirm what you already know. Because it leaves us restricted in what we can receive. 

So don't be a student like a pot with the lid on. Open up. Be open minded. Paying attention. Looking for new ideas. Looking for new ways to think about old ideas.

Second problem of the pot is if the pot is all full of mud and scum and debris you can't make a nice fresh pot of tea. So don't be a pot full of grime. Which means having a wrong motivation for your study, for your listening to the teachings. And wrong motivation may be I'm trying to listen to these teachings to point out some error so I can embarrass the teacher. Or I'm listening to these teachings to prove them wrong. Or I'm here for the teachings just because all my friends are going and I wanted to be part of the crowd. Or I'm going to the teachings because I want to show my buddies how cool I am. Wrong motivation is like a grimy pot. 

Then the last one is don't be a pot with the a crack in the bottom. So you pour the water into the tea, and the pot got a crack and the water just runs right out. So, don't be the student who hears the teachings and they run right out the bottom. We don't retain them. We don't review them. I did that with the recent Lam Rim. I wrote all down what it was I was going to work on, and then I got distracted to something else and I've not gotten back to it. My pot has a crack in the bottom. So don't be like that.

It happens to all of us from time to time. Have some super glue. Patch the crack. 

Then once you've decided to be a student, they say you get to learn that, he said choose, but it doesn't really choosing what capacity a student you will be. And the context is just to learn that there are three capacities because none of us here are lesser capacity.

Although maybe we're not even any capacity yet, but lesser capacity means the lower scope where ones motivation for learning is out of fear of the lower realms. So at this level we would have already had some conviction about future lifetimes, and some kind of understanding about how it is possible that we could end up as a hell realm being, a hungry ghost realm being, an animal being. Or even, well let's just call it that, we have this deep fear of dying before we've done something to prevent those lower births from being able to happen. 

So it's already at a pretty sophisticated level of understanding of death and rebirth and some level of understanding about karma, about behavior. So this lesser capacity doesn't mean you know somebody right off the street. We already need to have had a certain amount of Lam Rim teaching before we can even recognize, Oh yeah, that's what motivates me. Now that I hear about those hell round things and that death is actually so much closer, even in a worldly way. Man, I better get busy burning off those negative seeds that could lead me to one of those lower realms.

Although what we learn later is that one of the things that closes the door to lesser realms is growing our understanding of karma, the marriage of karma and emptiness to a certain level of understanding on our path of preparation. 

And those doors get closed. In the process of doing that, we're going to be doing purification and stopping harming others. But it's not that, oh, I'm not gonna close those doors to lesser rebirth until I've seen emptiness directly. It doesn't take that. 

So lesser capacity means that's my focus, that's my goal for this life. I think that's my highest capacity, is to work really, really hard and be sure I close the doors to lesser rebirth, which means I'll get another. I'll get a human rebirth or better. Which we learn technically, we don't want better, we want human. 

And I guess we have to deal with that somehow. So lesser capacity, lesser vehicular capacity is ‚I want to close the doors to my lesser rebirth‘. 

Medium capacity is when we recognize, yes, I want to close those doors and I'm doing it. And further I see that it is very possible for me to reach a point where I am free of all mental afflictions completely. I can reach Nirvana. I understand what I need to do to reach that. I will set about to accomplish that in this lifetime, and that's my highest goal - is reaching my Nirvana. 

In the process you stop harming others. In the process you are more kind. But at the medium capacity practitioner, we don't have those seeds that ripen that like say what about them? It's not that we're selfish slobs. It's just that we don't have that sense of what I do can influence their suffering. 

Our seeds are: My seeds make my suffering. Their seeds make their suffering. 

So reaching Nirvana is medium scope. 

Greater scope. There seems to me to be a really big leap between medium scope and greater scope. Because greater scope is that: I want to reach my total Buddhahood so that I can help everybody reach theirs. 

It's not even: I want to reach my total Buddhahood so I can help everybody reach their Nirvana. They will reach their Nirvana on their way to Buddhahood. But we want to bring them all to total awakening. And we see that we don't even quite know yet how it's going to happen. Our seeds ripen that: Wow if one person can reach Nirvana, then every conscious being can reach it too. It's just that that occurs to us and it reveals that our vehicular capacity is big. 

We then learned that if in our wish to carry all beings to total enlightenment we leave even a single one out of our effort, then we ourselves won't be able to reach the state of omniscience that's necessary to be able to help those others reach theirs. 

Our big capacity just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger as we understand more and more and more the process through which we transform into that being.

We have the seeds to be attracted to it. So even if we're not quite yet the Big Mac truck, we have the seeds for it. 

Geshela uses the analogy of lesser capacity is like a little VW bug. You can pack some boxes inside there, but you couldn't even move your whole bedroom with a VW bug. 

Then middle capacity is like the VW van. Or even a passenger van. Bigger than a VW van. A van. You can pack more stuff In the van. 

But the great capacity is like one of those great big semi tractor trailers that's got the two trailers in a row. Those are illegal when I was a girl, but now they're like trains. So huge, so powerful. Like that. 

Then in my own analogy, it's like Greater Way has got infinite number of trailers that you, the Mack truck drivers, pulling along. That's how much bigger great capacity is  over the others. But just to get a strong lesser capacity is a huge thing for a lot of us. Cause we don't really even stop to think about our next life. Let alone the one after that and the one after that and the one after that. I mean, I didn't until 20 years ago, 30 years ago. But I was already 40 years old. I hadn't thought about it. Never occurred to me. So there's a lot to learn.

The best finish is what I have for you for this class - because we didn't need to do all the background stuff - I have time to take questions. Or I will get credit for that extra time and use it in some future course when I go over. 

Questions? Concerns about this new where we're going in this program, in this class? 

[Flavia] Today I heard for the first time that everything that comes from Tsongkapa is Gelugpa. Can you explain a little more about that like Luisa was asking, OK is the Buddha in India and then we have a teacher and then we have other teachers and Nagarjuna. OK, we have Tsongkapa in Tibet. And then how is it there is this whole Gelugpa and a little more about that. 

And also that everything is Mahayana.

[Lama Sarahni] OK. Yes. Thank you. So when we talk about these three scopes, it's a little bit different than the Four schools of Indian Buddhism. 

And that's different than the four Lineages of Tibetan Buddhism.

Buddha Buddhism was in India. 

Primarily, what was being practiced was the Vinaya. Because everybody in Buddha's time was beginners. There was no Buddhism before Buddha. So he's teaching from the beginning. And at the beginning, we need to learn discipline and vowed behavior to be changing our seeds. And then somewhere along the line he starts teaching Heart Sutra, about the true nature of things, and some understood and some didn't. But then he‘d go to a new place and it would be new people, and he'd need to teach the beginning again, which was just about the four Arya truths: Everything's really suffering, and it's driven by karma, and so change your behavior and you can change your world. Pretty simple message. 

It got deeper for some. And deeper for some. And it grew and spread after Lord Buddha passed as students taught students taught students. And it went into other countries through the ages to what was Zaylon, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Vietnam, Thailand. It spread around. When it spread, whoever took it there, only took a certain amount of the text because it was too much to carry. And for instance in some places all that went there was the Vinaya teaching. 

And so in that culture that's what the Buddha taught was the Vinaya, because that's what they received historically. And all the rest of this stuff, from their perspective, was stuff that came along in from teachers after Buddha that were embellishing Buddha’s teachings. So not every Buddhist even believes that the Bodhisattva Buddhism, the Mahayana Buddhism, was taught by Lord Buddha. Let alone Tantra, whole another story there. 

So, as Buddhism went into Tibet, the Tibetan people had their own version of their religion. They were bon people, which means some multiple gods and nature spirits and so forth. But I don't know there was enough distress that they had the seeds to be open to the teachings that were starting to come in that were of Lord Buddha's teachings. But this is - I don't know the date - it'll come in the teachings the more specifics, but so Buddhism's getting introduced to these yak herders. And they're trying it on for size, and they're apparently liking it. And anytime we start to make changes, there's a part of our mind that resists those changes and shows up as difficulties and problems and into that those are called demons. 

So they were having demons. They would call for somebody whose specialty was like overcoming demon to come to Tibet to help them. Problem is, Amithaba was one of those whose specialties are in suppressing demon activity. And so he helped spread the teachings into Tibet. And then later comes Lord Atisha.

Lord Atisha is the one who was gifted to be able to put the three different scopes of practices all together into one series of teachings. He was the first to write a Lam Rim, the steps on the path. This is how it all ties together from soup to nuts. 

And he was teaching that. 

Then as that grows, little factions of people in Tibet - which is here's the valley, that's a group of people. Because it's so isolated from the other valley, so all these different little isolated groups. And they would develop their own practices related to what they were being taught. And so Nyingma was one of the earliest Tibetan traditions of Buddhism to develop. I don't know much about it. It seems very much focused on Creation stage practices of the Diamond Way, but as theIR open practice. So they're praying to deities and doing rituals to deities. 

Then the Sakya lineage or tradition came about during the Lojong times. And. That became a family tradition, not a monastic tradition. 

The Sakyas. And there's still Sakya lineage, Shakya groups. They study in a particular way. They do particular practices. They're all based on karma and emptiness. All of them. 

And then there's Kagyu. Which is an outshoot of the Sakya. An outshoot of the Lojong time period, all the Kadampa. When everybody was teaching each other then this one teacher had shown others and a lot of people followed them and Kagyu. 

The Kagyus got multiple schools within Kagyu. 

Lama Tsongkapa was born when all of these were pretty strong traditions within Tibet. He learned from Ngyingmas. He learned from Kagyus. He learned from Sakyas. Which is why he had access to all of them. And it's like, Wait, there's contradictions here. There can't be contradictions. If they're all... Maybe there can be. 

So then those who then followed him, meaning in the time after him followed him, and used what he wrote and what he taught to direct what they practiced and what they taught others, that‘s what became the Gelugpa tradition, the 4th tradition. 

And it was held in such high regard that the Dalai Lama comes out of that Gelug tradition. And the Dalai Lama is considered the spiritual and secular head of all four traditions. But each one of the traditions has their own head. 

So the Ngyingmas have the head Ngyingma guy and two other Ngyingmas. That Ngyingma Lama is as high to them as the Dalai Lama is. And they honor the Dalai Lama as - I don't know how to say it right. 

So each one has their own High Lama. Even the Gelugpas have another high Gelugpa. But the Dalai Lama is over all of them because he's the manifestation of Chenrezig. 

So now, recently he stepped away from being the secular head of the Tibetan exile. Now spiritual head of all of them, and so all the different traditions will study with His Holiness. So now the Mahayana is as opposed to Hinayana - and the Mahayana means great vehicle versus Hinayana lesser vehicle - it's a little different than those three scopes I was just talking about. But to close the door to lesser rebirth and to believe that Nirvana is the highest goal anybody can achieve, that's considered the Hinayana level of practice, level of teaching. 

Mahayana says: No. I believe that every conscious being’s inevitable evolution will be to that state of being, ultimate love, ultimate compassion, ultimate wisdom, fully omniscient based upon all-encompassing compassion. 

Mahayana understands karma and emptiness to the extent that that conclusion is revealed as inevitable.

Hinayana understands karma and emptiness. But not to the extent that that is revealed as a goal. So Mahayana can mean our level of understanding emptiness and karma. But generally speaking when you say Mahayana, it means having that wish to reach total Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings. 

Means Mahayana.

So when Buddhism went into Tibet, the level that was embraced was the Mahayana. So right from the get go they were being taught, so they had the seeds for the teachings that said: Every beings ultimate achievement, ultimate evolution will be there on full awakening being, standing on the billion planet. Every human that you like. Every human that you don't like. Not leaving a single one out. 

Mahayana.

So we are Mahayana Gelugpa. We are studying Mahayana Gelugpa Tibetan Buddhism. Or you could say Tibetan Gelugpa Buddhism. If you want a label, a category to be clear. 

I live in a community where people don't really know what a Buddhist is. And when I say it, they kind of go, Oh. And if you say: like the Dalai Lama. They go, Oh yeah.

Somehow he's so popularly known, even if they don't really understand the details, it puts it in a little bit of a context. Still pretty weird, pretty far out. But it's like, OK, I've got some context that I can fit you in a little box with this guy that wear red robes. Good enough for me. 

[Luisa] I have a like a stupid question. So Buddhism started with Buddha. But human beings have been there forever, I mean for more years. So, what was it before like? There was no Buddhism but still karma and emptiness was running the show, or not? So Buddha just made it? Why took it so long. For me, it's a bit strange that in 50,000 years of human or humanity, only 2500 years ago, someone had the aha moment.

[Lama Sarahni] Got it right. Yeah. Yeah. 

[Luisa] But am I understanding it correctly. It's like that like we have been there and the karma and emptiness were running the show and nobody realized until Lord Buddha.

[Lama Sarahni] Yeah, in India it was Hinduism and Vedic literature, and others as well. I don't know much that did teach karma. Karma as the law of cause and effect, but in the sense of it's your faith. Your karma is your faith. And you can't, really… you lived within it. But you couldn't use it. You couldn't manipulate it. You couldn't really do anything with it. You just were able to use it as the reason for why stuff happens. And it was a kind of comfort, right? This bad stuff happened. Oh my karma. Good stuff happens. Oh my Karma. It's a comfort.

Our modern culture does the same thing: Oh. God works in mysterious ways. Faith. Does it? Or luck, good or bad luck, right? Any of it, all of the ways that we justify things. And it is interesting. Does that mean nobody before Shakyamuni Buddha had the experience of seeing the seeds ripen and then seeing emptiness directly? 

And then recognizing the ramification of that. Like, really? Was he the first one to ever do it? And then when we study diamond cutter sutra, he even says, I've studied with 40 Billion Billion Buddhas before Me. And I never disturbed their heart. It's like it takes a certain amount of goodness, a tremendous amount of goodness to ripen a seed that's grown big enough to be something that apparently nobody's ever recognized has happened to them before. 

So it's one thing to have the experience of seeds ripening and emptiness directly. It's another to recognize what it was when you're out of it. 

We could interpret it as I died and now I'm back. 

We could interpret it as I took a quick nap there. 

We could interpret it there's nothing self existent about the direct perception of emptiness that makes us be on the conveyor belt. Which is why we train to understand it before we go into it. So that when we come out of it, we interpret it in a way that's going to move us forward. It's hard to understand. I wouldn't explain this to somebody who hasn't already studied. 

So back to your question. The more accurate question would be: Why? Why are my seeds making it? So that after 50,000 years of humanity, this one guy… I mean, the story I understand is he was seven years old when he saw it directly for the first time. And then it happened again later. Why are my seeds saying that it took that long for somebody to connect the dot fully. Because it took that long to gather enough goodness and to have the goodness grow. 

We have those teachings. It says after Lord Buddha got his wish to reach Buddhahood, it took him 3 * 10 to the 60th countless eons to reach Buddhahood. It took that long to grow the goodness. So it took humanity that long to grow the goodness to have just one of us reach the truth, and know it for what it is. Even though technically every one of us sees it every time we die. We just don't know it.

[Luisa] But when you say in the Heart Sutra it says there are, I don't know how many Buddhas.

[Lama Sarahni] Lots.

[Luisa] That means there weren't really Buddhas before him, so there were also some who already realized. But then he is the only one in our planet.

[Lama Sarahni] Right. He's technically the 4th one out of 1000 to come. In our planet.

Other planets would theoretically get to have their own Buddha. Which could be you. Probably so.

[Rachana] If Shakyamuni Buddha was the 4th one, like what's the story with the prior 3? 

[Lama Sarahni] The prior three are lost to history. 

[Rachana] That's terrifying. 

[Lama Sarahni] Yeah. My guess is some treasure is burried somewhere in the earth ans we just haven't found yet. That's got their story. Wrapped in scrolls of some kind. We just don't know it. Although curiously I'll share something from a different tradition you know I studied theosophy for years before.

And in theosophy they are pionting out that Shakyamuni Buddha is the first being to reach total Buddhahood from a human life. That the Buddhas that came to this earth beforehand had reached their Buddhahood from some other capacity and then came here, to help. But that one, Prince Gautama, he was the first to do it in a human life. But then we learned in the Uttara Tantra that he'd already done it long time ago. He just manifested doing it in a human life and is that like? Does that help us? Or does that make us say, well, you know, wait, he's faking it? Because you've already done it. But no, he's manifesting what we could do, too. By those 12 deeds. So yeah, I mean, we want it to be black and white, don't we? I'm with you, Louisa. And it's not. It's Gray all away, which is a good thing, because. The Gray all the way means our seeds can clarify it. Yeah. Good. 

(Usual closing)

So remember that person we wanted to be able to help.

We learned stuff that we will use sooner or later to help them in that deep and ultimate way someday. 

And that's an extraordinary goodness. 

So please be happy with yourself. 

Be happy with all the past yous hat's worked so hard to create this. 

Recall your own precious Holy Guide. 

See how happy they are with you. 

Grow your gratitude to them, your reliance upon them. 

Ask them to please, please stay close to continue to guide you and 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.

Feel them there, that love, that compassion, that wisdom. 

It feels so good. We want to keep it forever. 

And so we 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 other. 

To share it with everyone you love. 

To share with every being you've ever, ever seen or heard of. 

See them all filled with happiness, filled with wisdom, filled with kindness. 

And may it be so.

For the recording, welcome back. We are ACI Course One Class 2. 

Let's gather our minds here, as we usually do, please.

Bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again. 

And after our opening prayers, I'll go right into reading the text to you, so you can just keep listening. 

[Usual Opening]

And so holy Lama Je Tsongkapa instructs us:

I bow to all the high and holy lamas.

As far as I am able I’ll explain

The essence of all high teachings of the Victors,

The path that all their holy sons commend,

The entry point for the fortunate seeking freedom.

Listen with a pure mind, fortunate ones

Who have no craving for the pleasures of life,

And who, to make leisure and fortune meaningful, strive

To turn their minds to the path which pleases the Victors.

There's no way to end without pure renunciation,

This striving for pleasant results in the ocean of life.

It's because of their hankering life as well that beings

Are fettered, so seek renunciation first.

Leisure and fortune are hard to find, life‘s not long;

Think it constantly, stop desire for this life.

Think over and over how deeds and their fruits never fail,

And the cycle is suffering: stop desire for the future.

When you've meditated thus and feel not even

A moment's wish for the good things of cyclic life,

And when you begin to think both night and day

Of achieving freedom, you've found renunciation.

Renunciation though, can never bring

The total bliss of matchless Buddhahood

Unless it’s bound by the purest wish; and so,

The wise seek the high wish for enlightenment.

They’re swept along on four fierce river currents,

Chained up tight in past deeds, hard to undo,

Stuffed in a steel cage of grasping "self",

Smothered in the pitch-black ignorance.

In limitless rounds they're born, and in their births

They are tortured by three sufferings without break;

Think how your mothers feel, think of what's happening

To them: try to develop this highest wish.

You may master renunciation and the wish,

But unless you have the wisdom perceiving reality

You cannot cut the root of cyclic life.

Make efforts in ways then to perceive interdependence.

A person’s entered the path that pleases the Buddhas

When for all objects in the cycle or beyond,

He sees that cause and effect can never fail,

And when for him they lose all solid appearance.

You have yet to realize the thought of the Able

As long as two ideas seem to you disparate:

The appearance of things—infallible interdependence;

And emptiness—beyond taking any position.

At some point they no longer alternate, come together;

Just seeing that interdependence never fails

Brings realization that destroys how you hold to objects,

And then your analysis with view is complete.

In addition, the appearance prevents the existence extreme;

Emptiness that of non-existence, and if

You see how emptiness shows in cause and effect

You'll never be stolen off by extreme views.

When you've grasped as well as I the essential points

Of each of the three principal paths explained,

Then go into isolation, my child, make mighty

Efforts, and quickly win your ultimate wish.

Class 1 Quiz review

Alright then. 

Who was it that wrote that? Je Tsongkapa. 

What's his monk's name? Lobsang Drakpa. 

What are his dates? 1357 to 1419 

What's the actual name of this text? LAM TSO NAM SUM. 

Which means Three Principal Paths.

Meaning three important things of the path, right? 

No, three mental states which we need to cultivate. Three different realizations. 

Who wrote the commentary were studying from? Pabongka Rinpoche. 

His dates are 1878 to 1941. I didn't have them for sure before. 

Who was his student? I don't think that was on the quiz. Trijang Ronpoche. 

And who was his student that wrote the introduction to your reading? That is the book preparing for Tantra, by the way. Khen Rinpoche, Sera Mey Geshe Lobsang Tharchin, 1921 to 2004. 

Now that we've determined we're going to be serious students, there are three problems we are going to avoid. What are the three problems of the pot? 

The lid is closed, the pot is full and the pot has a leak.

So. You're not a teapot. So how does that relate to us as students? What's a student with the lid on like? 

We are not open to hear the wisdom.

What‘s a student who's already full of grime. When we have so many other ideas that we don't have room for the wisdom. Yeah, and wrongly motivated. 

And then the leaky pot. We just hear from one ear and then and (it goes) out to the other. All right, that's a good one. Nothing stays. 

So we're willing to make a little bit of effort. Because otherwise it does just that, right? You have to listen. Keep it in there. 

Which is why you have the homeworks and the quizzes. And really, which is why I like it for people to mark their own, because then they have to look at it again, and again and again. It's built into the system. 

Class 2 official start

This course, as we're learning, it's the very foundation. We're learning vocabulary, we're learning these principles. And then we refer back to them again and again and again through the rest of the courses. So one of the maybe unique things about Buddha Shakyamuni’s teachings was him saying from the get go, Don't just believe what I say. Test it, check it. Logic it out. Because if it doesn't make sense to you, you're not gonna use it to live by. 

Maybe we will when we're in that first blush of how wonderful the teachings seem to be. But then, as we really apply ourselves and we start doing some purifying, and challenges come, it is very likely that at some point enough yak poop hits the fan that we'll lose that reliance on the Dharma if we have it made this serious attempt to really show us that it is, that it must be a better guiding light than anything else I've ever been exposed to. 

It's easier to just take their word for it, but it won't hold up. 

Naturally, Buddha also needed to teach us how to do that. I needed to be taught how to do that. I went through school. Twice, high school, College twice, masters degrees twice. I was good at it. I could apply myself. I wasn't all that smart, but I knew how to take tests. I knew how to get A‘s (best grades). But once I met the Dharma, and especially once I started sharing it with other people, I realized that it was the ACI courses that taught me how to think. How to think through what I had been offered, look for the ramifications of it, and see whether it holds up. 

I think if I had known how to think like that when I was going through school, I would not have been such a good student because I was good because I conformed. 

And when you think for yourself, you're not so likely to conform, right? 

Because so much of what we as humans do is just absurd. And to learn how to think, my sense of humor grew because it can see the absurdity of the things that we think, say, and do. It's like: Really? 

It's amusing, actually, for me. It's amusing to me, not to other people, to me. David and I. 

There's a method to logic. Some of you have already taken that brutal course 13. And hopefully this will make a little bit more sense to you, but if you haven't taken that one, this is like logic in 10 minutes, so bear with me. 

In the process of learning how to prove something, there's a method to that where we state our topic of consideration. Call it statement 1. 

We state what we assert about that topic. Call it statement 2. 

And then we give our reason for why we make that assertion about the topic, call it statement 3. 

Then to prove whether our statement is correct or not, we use a method. 

Whereby we first check our topic of consideration with the reason. 

So statement 1 to statement 3, we check to see if those two have any kind of relationship. Does my reason have anything to do with the topic? 

If it does not, if we establish that it does not, you throw the whole argument out. 

You don't have to go any further. 

If we say OK, yeah, there's some relationship there, then we look at statement 3, the reason. We think if that reason is true — not whether or not it is true, but just if it were — would that necessarily mean that statement 2 would have to be true? 

If not, you throw the whole thing out. If yes, you check one more thing. 

You take statement 2 —your assertion—and you negate it. 

And then you look at your statement 3 and if the ramification of negating statement 2 negates statement 3, then your syllogism holds. 

It can be considered airtight logic. For yourself, right? Because you're the one who's checked it out. So in order to check these relationships, making your logical statement, checking it, it goes like this: 

You check statement 3 = statement 1. 

Is there a relationship? We need a method for being able to do that.

Then we check if 3 = 2. 

If 3 is true, is two then also necessarily true? 

We need a method. 

And the same for if not 2 then not 3. 

We apply this method, and the method that we apply is called 

MU SHI MU SUM

MU = Possibilities

SHI = 4 

SUM = 3

A & not B = Mu 1

B & not A = Mu 2

A & B = Mu 3

Neither = Mu 4

Mu Shi Mu Sum means the 3 or 4 possibilities, meaning permutations. 

If you have two things and you're checking to see if they are in relationship of some kind or not, you check these 3 or 4 permutations to see how they hold up. 

So the three or four permutations go like this. 

I know this is all really too abstract yet, but we'll get to an example. 

If you have two things that you're comparing, you have A and you have B. 

Permutation #1 is: Is there a situation in which we have A but not B? Permutation #2: Is there any situation in which we have B and not A? 

Permutation #3: Is are there situations in which both A and B are present or happening or etcetera. 

And #4 you can guess: Is there a situation where there is neither A nor B? 

Based on these systematic comparison you can answer these questions to yourself, yes or no? Does the topic and the reason have relationship — by checking. 

Then the same for the other two. 

Let me give you the context for this class.

Is virtue always a cause of Buddhahood? 

We could state that as this syllogism by saying: Consider the cause of Buddhahood. Consider causes. Virtue is always a cause of Buddhahood because Buddhahood is a pleasant result. 

So we want to check to see is it true that virtue is always a cause of Buddhahood? That's the assertion. 

So if we take statement #1: Consider the causes of Buddhahood and 

statement #3: Buddhahood is a pleasant result.

Is there a relationship between causes for Buddhahood and Buddhahood as a pleasant result.

I think we‘d have to say yes, right?

Even without knowing too much.

So we can go on with the syllogism.

The next task: If #3 is true, if it's true that Buddhahood is a pleasant result. Cause maybe somebody would say, well, it's not a pleasant result. In which case our syllogism doesn't hold. 

If it's true that Buddhahood is a pleasant result, is it necessarily true that virtue has to be a cause of it? Can you get a pleasant result out of a non virtue? 

Let's check. 

Could there be a condition where someone could become a Buddha, we need A and B. Let’s call Buddhahood A and virtue B. 

Can you have a Buddha without virtue? No. 

So let's check #2. 

Can there be not Buddha, and there be virtue. Yes. 

Let's check #3. 

Can there be both virtue and Buddha? Yes. 

Can there be neither virtue nor Buddha? Yes, samsara, right? 

Number two, all over the place. 

So three of the four hold, don't they? 

Can we have Buddha with no virtue? No. 

So only one of them didn't hold.

They say, as long as you have three, it proves. I don't know about that. But the point is, this is a method of checking to see how these things are in relationship so that we can go back to our syllogism and decide whether if 3 then 2 and if not 2 then not 3. 

But in the process of this we also meet up with recognizing: Gee. Do I really know what is meant by virtue? Do I really know what is meant by Buddha?

If we were giving this argument to someone else to convince them, we would already be ahead of the ball game a little too far. Because we would have had to have discussed with them what we mean by virtue. 

So what do we mean by virtue? 

Virtue we will learn, is a deed of thought, speech, or action that brings a good result. But we can be kind in the moment and somebody can yell at us the next moment. Does that mean that our kindness was not a virtue? 

Or does that mean that the yelling at me was not a result of the kindness I just did before? 

So when we say our virtue is something that brings a pleasant result, it does not mean a virtue is something that brings a pleasant result in the next instant. It means the result of that deed will be pleasant. 

And a non virtue is a deed whose result will bring something unpleasant. 

Now where does virtue then fall into the causes for Buddhahood? 

When we use that definition: a kind deed that brings a good result. Can we really say that virtue always is a cause of Buddhahood? 

Yeah, we'd have to say No because we do all kinds of kindnesses that will bring us pleasant results that are pleasant results that wear out. And those are not results or those are not causes for our Buddhahood except if we argue that, well, every time a pleasantness wears out and we're left a little dissatisfied, that's one step closer to waking up. Because if we don't recognize that we're dissatisfied when our pleasures wear out, we won't ever look for something better. We'd be just as happy with pleasures, expecting them to wear out. We would never try to stop the cycle if until something bad enough happens, right? 

So you could argue that even virtues when they're recognized to be limiting will push us along the path. 

But we're talking about more direct causes for Buddhahood. So we could say that it's not true this syllogism, that virtues always cause Buddhahood. Because there are virtues that are done missing something. So they will bring a pleasant result, but not Buddhahood. 

So when we're doing that comparison: Are there Buddhas without virtue? No. 

Are there virtues without Buddhas? Yes. 

What was that third one? Are there non virtues that can make Buddhas? No.

But do all virtues make Buddha? No. 

So what is it? What's our real assertion about the causes for Buddhahood? 

That's where it comes up. In the context of these three principal paths, Je Tsongkapa has said, no, we will never reach Buddhahood if we have not cultivated our renunciation, our Bodhichitta, and our correct worldview. 

So what's this relationship? Why those three? Why won't anyone of them be sufficient and how do all three relate to each other so that we can understand it well enough so that we can make a syllogism that is proof of what causes Buddhahood. 

Geshela’s example was: Suppose your kitchen suddenly has cockroaches in it. And we have the immediate reaction ewww—cockroaches—smack. 

Is that a cause for Buddhahood? No. 

Is that a cause for perpetuating suffering? Yes. 

So if we have cultivated a certain amount of renunciation, determination to get free of suffering existence: as we're looking at the cockroach resisting the urge to smack it, our mind would think through. OK, I'm wanting to stop this cycle of samsara. I understand about the 10 non virtues. Killing is the first one. Protecting life is its opposite. As much as I want to smack that little bug, I am going to refuse to do so. I'm going to find some other way to get rid of that creature, right? 

Buddha is not saying just live with cockroaches. They are suffering beings anyway. Make them your friend. Remember that Little movie, Wall-E? Wall-E had the pet cockroach, like the only living thing. It was so cute. It's like, I want a cockroach pet. He's not saying that. 

We are even with really strong renunciation, we are allowed to get cockroaches out of our kitchen. What Rinpoche did, apparently, was he watched those roaches for a while and he found out that they loved dry dog food. 

So he would put the bowl of dry dog food inside a garbage bag laid on the floor of the kitchen. And in the middle of the night he get up and without turning on the light, because that would frighten them, he just grabbed the bag, closed it, picked it up, took it outside, took it to the compost pile and poured the cockroaches and the dog food into the compost pile like: There you go, bless you. Here's the perfect little cockroach city for you. 

And he did that for, I don't know, a week, a month maybe, and no more cockroaches came. Ever. At least until Geshe Michael left. Now we don't know for sure, but presumably ever. He changed the karma by taking care of them. 

So when we've made our determination for renunciation to stop contributing to the cycle we can more wisely choose our behavior. It takes a certain amount of mindfulness to be able to do that, to be able to overcome the automatic reactions to smack the bugs, to pause before we smack it and think. 

That mindfulness we grow on our meditation cushion, but we use it off the cushion. And we'll be able to find this enough time to check our reaction and delay it. 

Maybe we can't delay our mentally afflicted emotion completely, but the delay is a struggle. 

The struggle is a virtue, is a goodness. So there we are back to that word again. 

So that's renunciation on the second level. 

If we're generating the wish for enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings, that little creature is one of those sentient beings you have pledged to save. Not kill. 

So, not only to save, but to make a little connection with, so that in some lifetime you can actually teach them how to become total Buddha. 

So as you're carrying them out to the compost pile, you can even talk to them. 

Hi, guys. Watch for me later. Call on me. I'll help you again. In fact, I'll help you in this ultimate way someday. Om mani padme hum. See you. Right into the compost pile. 

And then thirdly, if we have this correct worldview. 

We understand karma and emptiness such that, Oh my gosh, they're giving me the opportunity To make some really wise virtue here. Some virtue that's colored with renunciation, colored with Bodhichitta, and colored with correct view. So, as we see ourselves putting the cockroach into the compost pile or whatever with all three states of mind, we have made causes for our future Buddha. 

Same deed: not killing the cockroach, putting it out instead. 

The state of mind we have as we're doing it makes the difference between a virtue, a pleasantness that will wear out, and a cause of future Buddhahood. 

The deed's not different, it's the state of mind that's different, that's bigger, while we're protecting that one little life or 50, however many it ends up being. 

Actually, until we have these three realizations, our good deeds are causes for future pleasant results. And as we're growing these principles into realizations, those good deeds are getting stronger and stronger, and they are contributing to keeping us on our path to the realization. 

It kind of sounds like: Until I realized these three, I'm still stuck. 

But it's it's not like that. Because the effort to have those, any of those three to any extent in our mind as we're doing our kindness, keeps the ball rolling. 

We're going uphill. It's pushing the ball uphill to those realizations that then will make all our good deeds automatically causes for Buddhahood. We'll see. 

So we would have to say No, virtue is not always the cause of Buddhahood. 

That doesn't mean non virtue is ever a cause of Buddhahood. 

But it means virtue under the influence of renunciation, bodhichitta, and correct view, is the cause of Buddhahood. And so we make the distinction between virtue and merit, the word merit. 

Merit means virtue done under the influence of those 3 principles. 

This tradition is very precise in its words. 

I don't have a deep enough association with other Buddhist traditions to know if they're so precise in their wording. When I read books, I'm just never quite sure. I don't know. So if you ever are in a situation where you're using our vocabulary in someone outside our own group, just be open minded to recognizing that they may be understanding the words you're using in a different way. 

Actually they are for sure. Everybody is but one might want to be clear if we're trying to make a careful point. Make clear that there is a difference between kindness, virtue, and merit. Not in the deed done! In the state of mind while we're doing it. You see? 

And so that's again where meditation efforts, meaning on our cushion, taking time in our own mind, reviewing these things and imagining our day, and being in a challenging situation, and imagining how I might respond differently when I'm not in it yet, will help eventually when we are in that situation to respond differently. Our meditation practice increases our level of mindfulness, and that little bit of observer mode simultaneous with being engaged. It can be really, really helpful in our ability to choose our interactions with others. 

Geshela asks: What is it we must understand to develop effective motivation to apply ourselves to these practices? Because it's hard. It's like swimming upstream when everybody expects you to get angry and yell back and you don't, they think you're a pushover or there's something wrong with you or didn't you understand what I just said? I'm saying you're a jerk. How come you're not mad at me? 

We need a certain amount of confidence in our understanding to be able to withhold that counter‘s force that we used to be a part of, right? We used to perpetuate. Hopefully we're doing it less so now. 

Here's what we need to understand. 

Here's the beginning of it anyway. Please say Mahamudra. It's the Sanskrit.

CHAKYA CHENPO is the Tibetan. 

MAHAMUDRA - great seal (codeword for DPE)

CHENPO = great, Maha (Sk)

CHAKYA = seal, mudra (Sk), not the animal but to put the seal on something. Meaning it's properly enclosed, safely enclosed. Then also with the meaning of properly identified. 

The example they use is: in the olden days before envelopes that you licked and stuck, you had to use a wax, melted wax and your chop and that would seal the envelope so that when it gets delivered, the person who receives it knows that it wasn't open because it would break the seal and so they would know it was opened. And then the chop would tell them who it came from. 

So it was the way of identifying like the return address and a way of proving the authenticity of what was inside. 

They say a king was never separated from his wax and chop, because if he ever had to write an order, he needed that as his way to show that it was his order and not somebody else’s. 

Somehow that idea came to me the direct perception of emptiness. 

When you figure that one out, will you let me know why that‘s the identifier and the sealer. I can see why it's the most authentic, right? It's the first time that we actually experience the true nature of existence is when we're having that direct perception of emptiness, and somehow we know it's authentic. That it's the King's chop and it wasn't tampered with. Something like that. I don't quite relate to it. 

But then mudra. That term mudra also stands for those hand gestures. 

The mudra for the perfect mandala, the pure world, is the one we've all learned. It's a mudra, a seal. Like a physical manifestation of some idea we have in mind that we'll learn a whole bunch of them through the course of our training. 

Then mudra, CHAKYA, has a couple other meanings that we'll learn later. 

Yet, this Mahamudra, the highest one, the most important one is the experience of the direct perception of emptiness, with the mind of that experience. 

The mind having that experience is Mahamudra. 

The pen & no self nature

So let's just review. Don't shut your mind off when I pick up my pen. So let's do it again. If we were talking to somebody who didn't know what the direct perception of emptiness is, I would have just spent the last couple of minutes talking about something that they just (looking like someone irritated), right? 

So we would need to go back and say, Look, this is what I mean by emptiness and why it's so important. So let's do this exercise, this experiment, what is this thing? And usually I write on my hand to show you that it's a pen, so you can see it well enough. Pen. Proof, right? 

When it does that little thing (clicking with the thing atop the pen), that's the proof. That it's a pen. So we see pen. Along comes Molly the dog. I show the pen to Molly the dog. And what does Molly do? She sniffs it. She chews it. Probably crunch. Hmm. Molly, you just destroyed my pen. 

Sarahni, thanks so much for saving this wonderful thing for me to chew. You could have done it. 

Whose right? I am. I am smarter than the dog. That dog's chewing on my pan. Right? 

No! Wrong. 

Because the pen I am concerned about is a pen that I believe the dog sees pen too, they just chew on it. Which means, I believe, that the object has something in it that says: Pen. 

And if that's true, apply that logic: If it's true that this object determines itself as a pen, could I and the dog experience it any differently? No, because this thing's telling us how to experience it. Its identity is in it, we believe. 

But then, sometimes you use it to tie your hair up. 

Sometimes we use it as a doorstop. 

And we still think, well, the pen is just being nice, it's letting me use it as a doorstop.

But that means then that the pen is depending on something else to be something else. Which means it's not pen from its own side. 

It's only pen from its own side when I'm thinking of it as pen from its own side.

Because I can think of it as a pen that I'm using as a doorstop. 

Which is different than the pen that I used to write with. 

Which is different than the pen that I used to demonstrate that it has no identity of its own. 

All of that's coming from us. Not from the pen. 

So the very way we believe things exist is inconsistent with the way we use them. 

And yet we never stopped to think, Well, isn't that weird? That I see the dog chew on a pen. I see the fly land on a pen. Whereas the fly is just on this hard surface looking for something. 

When we say, Isn't it clear that the identity of the object is coming from the perceiver of the object? We go, OK, that is clear. And that's what we mean by the no self nature of this pen. 

The no self nature does not mean there is not really a pen here. I just made it up. 

It means the thing that's here, being a pen, is coming from us, not it. 

And did you feel your mind just go: No, it's not right. 

There's something there, OK? I put my pen-ish on it, but there's something there, right? Right. Until you go looking for that something. 

I'm getting ahead of myself because it's you guys. 

The no self nature of the pen means that its identity is not in it until we put it on it in it, which we do—mistakenly. That's the empty nature of the pen. Its lack of its own nature, lack of self nature. Which is what we mean by emptiness. 

It's true about the pen. It's true about every other object in your experience: Physical objects, non physical objects, your own thoughts, your own feelings, your own self. It's true of every existing thing, is that they exist lacking their own identity in them. 

They exist lacking their own identity. Which means they are available to be what anyone who experienced them as, to be what we experience them as. 

So we can kind of get that with the outer things. We can all look at the same tree and it is the same object we're all focusing on, but we all see it in a way unique to each other. Then you bring a bug or a worm, and they see it in their own unique way. 

It's no wonder we argue about things, because we think everybody sees it in the same way we see it, and feel about it the same way we feel about it, or we expect them to and can't understand why they can't understand why it's so important to me. Because we think our needs are most important. Because we're wired for survival. 

So none of it is because we're bad people or we're incapable of changing. 

It's all driven by the very misunderstanding that the identities are in the things that we are experiencing, including ourselves. 

So then the question needs to be: Why? Why? Why do I see pen? Why does the dog see chew toy? Why does the fly see landing pad? 

All of those experiences are results. 

Things that are happening now are results happening. 

Results have to have causes. 

Causes have to have been put in already in order for a result to come out. 

So this idea of causes and results, and then our response to the results becoming the new causes for future results, is what we mean by karma.

Karma isn't a thing that makes that happen. Karma is the term we use to describe that process of existence.

And that process of existence has some consistencies. 

1. Like brings like. 

2. Causes grow into bigger results than their causes. 

3. You can't have a result if you don't have the cause. 

4. And once you've made a cause, it's not going to go away by itself. It must bring a result. 

Mahamudra, is this key experience of experiencing directly this lack of self nature of all existing things, including oneself. One's own body, one's own personality, one's own identity. And in that experience there is no awareness of subject object differentiation. There is only this absence of self nature experience happening, seeds ripening and you can't be aware that you're doing it at the time. Because to be aware of self is the appearing reality, the reason the results happening of past awareness of me. So it's more like you're experiencing nothing or nothing, but it's not that. 

And when you come out of it, you're no longer aware of it, but part of what you are aware that had just happened was that it was the first truly accurate, valid perception you ever had. And there's no doubt about it. 

And that's an important piece because as you're out of it, and the longer you're from it, the world appears the same old way. Without that conviction in the experience, one might start to doubt what was just a weird dream. Or, you know, maybe I gotten into some bad mushrooms or something, right? You would start to doubt. And you can't doubt once you've experienced—we call it truth, ultimate Reality. 

That experience is called the Mahamudra, the CHAKYA CHENPO, the Great Seal. Because it has sealed you off from your belief in your ignorance. And you are on the conveyor belt to Nirvana or Buddhahood, depending on your state of mind when you went into that experience. 

Afterwards, we still have seeds that were made stained with ignorance, and those still ripen into seeing things, experiencing things with their identities in them. 

But now you know you're incorrect. You know that you yourself and the world you're walking through are all appearing to you differently than the way they truly exist. 

Because the way they truly exist is as these ripening results of imprints made by our behaviors. So that's what's become so clear in the training that goes into seeing emptiness directly and then how we apply ourselves having come out of it to training our behavior, to be creating the seeds, the mental imprints that will be the causes for our future Buddhahood. Instead of causes for perpetuating Samsara. 

Going into that direct perception of emptiness, if we are well trained in our renunciation and we are well trained in our Bodhichitta, then we step on to the Bodhisattva path where all of our deeds become causes for future Buddhahood. If we go into that experience with renunciation, that experience will either lead us to closing the doors to lesser rebirth, or all the way to Nirvana. Probably not just closed doors, it'll always take you on to Nirvana. Nirvana being that state where we're free of all mental afflictions, but not omniscient. So not Buddhahood. 

The purpose of the Mahayana training is for us to cultivate these three intellectual understandings to bring on them as realizations. The third one being the direct perception of emptiness, which is the highest realization of the correct worldview.

So we'll get lesser realizations of correct worldview. And we'll apply ourselves, apply that to our growing renunciation. That will help us grow our Bodhichitta, and that will help us grow our correct world of view to more and more subtle levels. 

Meaning not so much intellectually, I've got it better, but meaning in my day-to-day interaction with others I can apply it better. Somewhere in the back of my mind I'm aware that this is all of my own making, including the Me. And all of it, an opportunity to create, create, create. Some days it'll be better than others. That's natural. 

The Diamond Way

Having had the direct perception of emptiness with these 3 high states of mind, they say that we most likely have only 7 lifetimes to go to our Buddhahood. 7 lifetimes, roughly 500 years. Sounds like a long time. But those 500 years will all be in perfect circumstances for continuing to walk the path. 

500 years out of three countless, even since I, we first heard of Bodhichitta is a blip, right? So we would be encouraged, only 500 years, only seven lifetimes to go. Unless, we meet the Diamond Way Teachings, the Secret Teaching. 

It may be that somewhere along the line you go, ‚7 lifetimes is too much suffering for everybody else. It's just not acceptable. There's got to be a faster way. Somebody show me the faster way. I'm willing to do anything I need to do.‘ 

And there is a faster way, the Diamond Way. 

Technically, you find a qualified teacher. They check to see that you're qualified, they give you initiation, they plant these seeds in your mind, and they give you these tasks to do, these practices to do, that are designed to ripen our negative karma fast and furiously, and to plant our goodnesses fast and furiously such that the transformation happens before our karma for this life wears out. 

We transform. It's high risk, high gain. Because if our realizations are not really strong and those karmic seeds are starting to ripen fast and furiously, it's hard to stay put. On the other hand, we can have the goodness, that it's the goodnesses that are ripening fast and furiously and things are just getting better and better and better and better, and it's seductive. It's like, wow, life is great. My Tantra is going great. I'll just keep it up because life so good. Whoops. We got sucked into pleasures of this life and we forgot that our task is to reach Buddhahood, and it's not just a pleasant human life. 

So in both ways Tantra can be walking the razor's edge, they say. 

But people still say, just take me into Tantra. If Tantra is the fastest way, forget all this slow stuff. Let's just go to Tantra. 

And of course, if we don't have this strong foundation in karma and emptiness, if we haven't worked with our own renunciation wanting to get free ourselves, then Tantra won't work. We can try and try and try to do the practices and nothing will change and we'll give up. Or it'll work in this way that life just gets too good to care about other people's suffering. Like a God realm. 

So without these three principle paths, strongly Tantra doesn't work, whether you get it or not. With these three principal paths lived, used in life, Tantra will happen to you. And what that means is you are experiencing these amazing synchronicities, where you got a flat tire and you've got a meeting and you've got to get there and somebody comes along and don't worry, I'll deal with it, I'll take you to work. 

Like, who are you? They just show up. 

Happened to David and I the other day. 

We had a big car load of recycles that you have to take to other part of town and it's got a little dirt area that we don't drive into. So you have to carry from the street to these bins, and I guess we look like two kind of crotchety people. We're taking these things to the bins. And this lady pulls up in her car. She gets out. Let me help you. She didn't even have recycles. She was just driving by and saw us. Let me help you. She unloaded the car for us. In the heat of the day and it was like, wow, you're our angel for the day. And she goes, I'll take that. And she got in her car and drove away. It's like, wow, cool, like angels show up at the funniest times. That's Tantra happening. 

It's a sign of of progress, making progress. 

That could have happened, that can happen to people without initiation, without mantra work, without… Because it's a ripening of kindness, of goodness. We've done that kind of thing before. And so now it's happening to us. That's Tantra. Seeing, Oh, that caused that. 

So no hurry to get into the Diamond Way without these three strong powers within us. 

Which is why our tradition says do your 18 courses, keep your book, meditate. So that when you do go formally into the Diamond Way, you are so well prepared that you don't have the nasty Karmas anymore to ripen a rough time. You do have the goodnesses to see, Wow, some really wild cool stuff is happening already. 

CHAKYA CHENPO. The relationship between Tantra, the relationship between the three principal paths and Tantra. Got it? They are our foundation.

Renunciation: recognizing that this world is broken. The world's not broken. My understanding of how I think the world works is broken. I am broken. I need to fix me to fix the world. Renunciation. 

Bodhichitta: Well, if that's true for me and everybody I see is living in my broken world, I guess they're probably broken too. I want to help them. I want to help them stop their worldly suffering. I'm incapable. 

I want to bring them to total enlightenment. I'm incapable without knowing how to help them. How I learned how to help them is to try to help them in higher and higher ways, with that aspiration to reach that state of mind that's omniscient, that knows exactly, that perceives exactly what they need to give up and take up. Because the omniscient mind perceives directly their emptiness and their dependent origination. You see other’s karmas and know how to help them. 

Veronica, you had a question. 

[Veronica] I wanna ask that, you just say that when we are done in this we probably will experience seven lives time to reach our goals. But my question would be. we will die and when we come back again we actually don't know what we did before. How does this process happening? How do I know, oh, I did this last life and I make sure myself will go into the next life and learn this again. 

[Lama Sarahni] Yeah, apparently one of the things that you come to realize after your direct perception of emptiness with Bodhichitta, with a mind and Bodhichitta, is that you know the circumstances of your future lifetimes. You like have seen them during that period of the JETOP YESHE and then so this life you know how long it's going to be. You know how it's going to end. And you know the circumstances of your next life. I don't know if you know exactly, I'm going to be born in Chicago on this day, but you know the circumstance. So then you as a little baby, you're not aware probably, but then fairly early on in life you are somehow introduced to a spiritual path and in being introduced to it, you will go very swiftly into deep realizations of it and standing as directly again in that lifetime early on. And then that life and the same with the next and the next. And my guess is each one it comes to you more and more early in life. Thank you. Good question. I yakked right through our break time. Let's take a break.

[break]

As I work with my understanding of emptiness and karma, I recognize more and more that it's my interactions with others that is the arena in which I plant the imprints in my mind, through which my renunciation can go deeper, my Bodhichitta can get bigger. And as that as I apply myself in that way my understanding of the marriage of karma and emptiness gets richer. And that strengthens my renunciation and strengthens my Bodhichitta. 

So we can see these three like interweave. And the goodness of working with those as guiding my behavior towards others, is what cultivates the experience of the CHAKYA CHENPO,, the Mahamudra. Is what we'll bring on that direct perception of emptiness. That will be a result of causes. We create the causes by working with the ideas intellectually, applying them to our behavior, directing those seeds towards gaining those realizations. 

And one day it happens. We have to give it the opportunity by training in meditation. We'll learn. But it's not something you can just decide: I'm going to see emptiness directly. I'm going to sit down until I do it. I tried one time, It didn't work. 

It needs to be cultivated and then it will happen. 

How do we use these three together to cultivate the direct perception of emptiness, through which then we go on to cultivate more directly our six perfections, that cultivates directly our Buddhahood? 

We need to know the causes for Buddhahood. 

What are those direct causes? And those direct causes come in two main forms called Tap and Sherab. 

Tap means method. Sharab means wisdom. 

When we do our dedication prayer at the end, we say: May all beings collect the collections of merit and wisdom. 

This is what we're talking about. 

Merit means all those actions that we do intentionally to plant seeds for our realizations that will take us to Buddhahood. 

Merit or method? Methods. 

We are shooting for Buddhahood. Which means our methods, our activities need to be colored with Bodhichitta, my wish to reach total enlightenment for the sake of everybody's benefit. 

And to grow that, I need to have already cultivated my renunciation: I'm sick and tired of my own suffering. I'm gonna do what I have to do to stop it. 

Tap method side has both, our renunciation and our Buddha, propelling our activities, our choices of behaviors. 

Then Sharab is the wisdom side. And that's our application of our correct worldview. Our understanding of the blank nature of all three spheres of every experience and how we use that understanding to plant through our behaviors. Plant the causes for our future through our behaviors. 

These two together include then all three of those principles. 

In the method side is renunciation and Bodhichitta.

In the wisdom side, Sharab, is our correct worldview. 

These really aren't separate things either. They're going to wrap amongst each other as well. 

To understand about how method and wisdom combined to make our causes for Buddhahood, Geshela wants us to think about how karma and emptiness applies to our own self.

Use me myself as an example and then take that and do it for you yourself. Just because I'm in the hot seat here as the teacher. 

I, my belief in myself, is of a human being with all those aggravations and distresses of a human being, and all the goodnesses of a human being, ordinary human being. Each one of you is perceiving me in a different way. 

Presumably human being who knows a little bit more than you, is a little bit ahead of you on the path. 

Maybe, somebody's hanging on every word. 

Maybe somebody's going, Will you please get to the point and finish this class? 

Maybe different reactions, different perceptions from each of us. 

Who's right? I would, old me, ignorant me would say, Well, I'm the only one who really knows myself. They can all see me in all these different ways. And I like the ones who see me in ways that they like me, and I don't like the ones that see me in ways that they don't like me. That's their problem. 

But me, I know my real self. 

But then, like when I really stopped to think about it, it’s like I've never even seen my own face. You guys have. Some of you have even up close in person and I never have. Well, so how can I say I know myself better than anybody else? If I'm ever seen, even in my own face. I've never seen the back of me. I have no idea what that looks like. David says it's cute, but I don't know, right? 

These are just silly little things we think of when we're teens, but they are significant. 

That any way we can get ourselves off automatic pilot and recognize, Oh my gosh, my true nature is that I'm available to be what I perceive myself as, and I'm available to be what you perceive me as. And I'm available to be whatever anybody is perceiving me as at any moment. 

And then, if they perceive me as something that they don't like, OK, fine, you know, may it be pleasant for them anyway. It allows this openness and ability to be what they need. Maybe somebody needs to get mad at somebody, to like, blow it off. It's not ever a good thing to do, but I could be their vent and just suck it out of them and let them burn it off and be done with it. Without engaging them, getting offended by it.

On the other hand, I could be the recipient of their extraordinary kindness. 

And still, it's like, well, that's really a nice ripening. And not get this expectation and Oh, I'm so great, they should be doing that. 

But just be aware of this empty nature that makes us available. That empty nature is so close to love. It's like you're aware of your empty nature, you're aware of your willingness to be what they need in the moment, whatever it is, for their benefit. 

That's love, right? Our true nature is empty. 

So quickly it can go to love, right? That they taught me recently, this is how you show love, right? I think that's what it's coming from, yeah, so quickly, love. 

So if that's true, that my true nature is this availability to be what anybody's perceiving me as. And there are such a thing as fully enlightened beings, one of whose quality is omniscience, which means they see all existing things at all times, and that emptiness of those, then there are omniscient beings who are aware of me right now, right? And they're seeing my emptiness, right? 

So if an omniscient being can see me and my emptiness and my past, my present and future, those omniscient beings are seeing my future Buddhahood. 

It's not future for them. It's already there. 

Future for me. Because I don't see it yet. 

But does it exist or doesn't it? 

Could it be that there's somebody that I see as a human, who sees me as that fully enlightened being? Could be, right? 

Could it be that I'm seeing someone as a human who knows themselves as a fully enlightened being and knows I'm seeing them as a human? Sure, right?

If you are a fully enlightened being, knowing that there were others that were seeing you as a human, how would you feel towards them? How would you act towards them? 

You'd stay in secret, right? You would be willing to do and be whatever it was they needed. That can be hard. If you're a parent, you know how to do that. 

It's hard to see and be exactly what they need because it isn't always nice. Doesn't always seem nice.

The two bodies of a Buddha

Why am I talking about all that? 

What's Buddhahood gonna be like? We kinda need to know. We can't conceive of it. It's way better than anything we can conceive of, but we need to kind of know in order to know what seeds we plant to make it happen. 

So, Buddhas are said to have two main bodies. 

They call them bodies, but they mean aspects. 

Not like, here's Buddha Shakyamuni, Paradise Buddha and here's Buddha Shakyamuni, some other one. 

Not different bodies like that. 

Shakyamuni Buddha has his form body and he has his mental body. 

Chu-ku (Tib), in Sanskrit is Dharmakaya. 

Here it means the mental body. 

Chu and dharma, we think of as the teachings of the Buddha. 

It also means all existing things. And here it has the connotation of the state of mind that perceives all existing things. Meaning their appearing nature and their empty nature simultaneously. 

So Chuku is the mental body of our fully enlightened being, which is omniscience and that empty nature of all the other parts of our Buddha being. 

So one half of Buddha is called mental body. 

The other half is Suk-ku or Rupakaya which is the physical body, the appearing side. 

The mental side has no appearance. 

The physical side has appearance. It's not physical flesh and bone like ours. It's physical by way of vibration, subtle vibration. 

But it does have form. So there's two form bodies as well. 

The paradise body, meaning the way the fully enlightened being appears to themselves in their own paradise world. Which has in it other enlightened beings and high level Bodhisattvas. 

And then the other part of their appearing nature is their emanation bodies, their emanations. 

We can think of their emanations as Shakyamuni Buddha showing up on earth to do his teachings for those 80 to 83 years. But we can also think of a Buddha as emanating as the refreshing rainfall we finally got. Or emanating as that cockroach in your kitchen to give you the opportunity to grow your Bodhichitta or emanating as that nasty coworker. Or emanating as a cranky two your old. Whatever we need.

It's not from their side, looking down at us going, what does Ale need today? 

I think I need to aggravate her to see how her patience is going. 

It's that they're loving compassion spontaneously is matching what our karma needs, what our karma is ripening. 

So when we really dig into what it is to be emanations of Buddha, it gets so fast and so beautiful so fast that it's hard to really wrap our mind around it. But just think of it as being like you got to your Buddhahood by wishing, I want to reach Buddhahood so that I can help everybody reach there. 

What it is to be Buddha is to perceive directly what every being needs to give up and take up in order to reach their Buddhahood. And then your compassion manifests as being that for them. 

It's just so big, so vast, so beautiful. And I think of it as being propelled by love.

If love is the manifestation of this wisdom mind, it's going to be what anybody needs., whether the other person sees it as nice or kind or helpful or hurtful, it's what they need. And that love sticks by them until they get through it and they wake up from it. And they become that for others. 

It's our destiny. It's what we're meant to do as conscious being.

Why am I going into that? We need causes for the two form bodies. 

Our Paradise body and our emanations, and we need causes for the omniscience and the direct awareness of emptiness constantly as well. 

Two main kinds of causes, wisdom causes and form causes. 

Method and wisdom. 

So the method side makes the seeds for our form bodies. 

The wisdom side makes our seeds for the mental bodies. 

They're not separate seeds. Thus, any given seed has a form component and a mental component. The mental component is our level of awareness of our renunciation, Bodhichitta, correct worldview as we're giving the flowers right to our Aunt Mary? 

The act of giving the flowers to Aunt Mary, having tried to get her the flowers she likes at a time that she would like, those are the method side seeds imbued with the wisdom seeds that altogether are creating the causes for our form body and mental body. 

Along the way those seeds will bring us people doing kindnesses for us. 

So it's not like once we're making causes for Buddhahood, we're not making any causes for future lifetimes. It's not one or the other. But everything that we do can be infused with this method and wisdom, so that everything we do becomes our method side. Because our wisdom is growing so strong. And the goodness bless you of the kindnesses helps our wisdom grow deeper and stronger, and more readily available so that our methods can be more deeply infused. 

It's a process. It's not a matter of just deciding I'm going to do it. 

It's a training. And we apply ourselves to training just like we train in anything else.

Most of us can't take on playing the piano and just get good at it, right? I saw a video of a 4 year old who'd played piano for three months and he was always already playing Chopin. Wow, that's cool. 

But most of us have to take lessons, and have to work at it, and have to play the chords. We are at that stage in our training. 

So don't over expect, because then you'll get disappointed in yourself. 

Recognize that I've just taken on a new sport or a new dance or a new something, and I want to learn this to the point of competition or to the point of performance. 

Hold it up over here. And keep thinking about how fun it'll be to get really good at it.

And be willing to make the effort to change. 

That's what these classes are about. 

Alright, so the method side, our deeds done infused with our renunciation and our Bodhichitta, informed by our correct worldview becomes what's called our SUNAM KYI TSOK.

Sunam kyi tsok and Yeshe kyi tsok.

TSOK = collection or gathering. 

SUNAM = merit 

So the collection of merit. Our group has a venerable Sunam, Lobsang Sunam. I think you have met her. It means clear mind merit. 

And then Yeshe kyi tsok means the collection of wisdom. 

Wisdom, meaning understanding of the marriage of karma and emptiness. 

That empty nature of all existing things, and so how they appear is a result of one's own past action. 

Those two collections, meaning the imprints that we make in our mind through the merit and through the wisdom. Kind deeds done with wisdom is what makes them merit. That's where we started at the beginning of class. 

It's more than virtue. 

Kind deeds done with wisdom. 

So, seeing emptiness directly is the experience of wisdom that infuses your mind with it. Until then we need to impose our understanding of emptiness and karma on our minds as we're doing our deeds. 

We just have to train to remind ourselves of it. 

That grows the goodness to see it directly and then it's there. It's like we've got glasses on and we see through it constantly. 

Until then, you have to keep remembering to put the glasses on. 

But every time we do, we are gathering a little bit of merit. So this isn't like all or nothing. It's a gradation. 

Eventually they become fullon and that's when we're on that conveyor belt to Buddhahood that we can just sit on the conveyor belt, we can walk on it, we can run on it — depending on our own motivation. 

We can see how the three principle paths are related to creating the causes for Buddhahood. Because they help us grow our wisdom with our virtues, to make our virtues into merit that allows us to grow our wisdom, that deepens our merit. 

The two go together. 

As we are holding doors open for people, letting the cars in and traffic—all the little kindnesses that we already do. Now we're infusing them with our understanding about being able to do them in order to bring everybody to ultimate happiness someday. 

So renunciation and Bodhichitta make up our motivation for our kind deeds, and our correct worldview makes up our growing wisdom. 

So that's how the three principle paths relate to the causes for Buddhahood. 

Because the collection of merit is the causes for our form bodies, and the collection of wisdom is the causes for our mental bodies of our future Buddha. Got it? 

LAM TSO NAM SUM, the three principal paths practiced well is starting you on your path to your Buddhahood. It requires thinking about them. Stopping every now and then during your day to check: 

Have I thought about them? 

Have I used them to guide my behavior? 

Where did I do a little bit of it? 

Where can I do more of it? 

I just stop and check. Write it down, but you don't have to. 

Once your mind knows you're watching, it will cooperate a little bit better. 

If we don't check on it, it will stay on automatic pilot. 

So learn some method of checking. 

We call it keeping a book. The app is on your phone too, you can get that Keep My Vows app and you can use it even if you don't have vows. It'll do your refuge advices your lifetime lay. You can just use it as guidelines if you want, even without having vows. 

But come up with a method.

Obstacles to reaching Buddhahood

One little piece left for your homework. 

Why is this so hard to do? Like how come we can't hear it and go, Oh silly me. OK. I'll live according to this way. 

It could be that. If it's not, it's because we have obstacles to it. 

Not surprising that we would have obstacles to something so new and different that it's completely going to change our world. 

I can see myself rejecting new ideas. This life from past ones. 

There are two kinds of obstacles that prevent us from actualizing this. 

They're called SHE-DRIP and NYON-DRIP. 

SHE-DRIP = obstacles to wisdom

SHE is short from Sherab. What's Sharab? Wisdom. 

DRIP means obstacles. 

How can wisdom be an obstacle? 

It doesn't mean that. It means obstacles to wisdom. 

They say obstacles to knowledge. 

NYON-DRIP = mental affliction obstacles

NYON is short for NYONMON, which is mental afflictions. This is mental affliction obstacles. That makes more sense.

Every mental affliction we have is an obstacle to our knowledge, wisdom, virtue, merit, Buddhahood. 

But in a sense, every mental affliction that arises is an opportunity to see it as a mental affliction and not act from it. So now our mental afflictions are actually opportunities to grow our Buddhahood. 

But they're called obstacles because the very fact that we have seeds for mental afflictions that haven't even ripened yet, those seeds in our mind clog our ability to understand emptiness even as we hear the pen. We're misunderstanding even as we understand the pen thing, we're misunderstanding it. 

Because we have these mental affliction obstacles and these obstacles to knowledge. Because those, all our previous seeds are not just filled with our mistaken view of the world, but they're filled with our belief that our view is correct. 

We have a mistaken view of the world, but we don't even know it's mistaken, and so we hold so strongly to it being correct. That when we're challenged by it, we even reject, we have to struggle with the challenge. Because our seeds that are ripening to even hear a challenge to what we believe is correct is so threatening. 

It's like, oh, I want to believe, I want to do it. But there's something in me that goes no, no, no, because that means I was wrong all along. 

So a really big step, I found, in all of these practices is really digging into that resistance to being wrong. Anybody have that? 

It's like I see it so strong in me. Don't ever point out that. When I was younger, don't ever point out that I was wrong in something. Correct me. Show me the right way, but don't go, You did that wrong, right? Man, that would just bring up this ‚I won't listen to anything else you say‘ inside.

My behavior would be OK, OK, OK. But inside I'm going (grumbling). 

Can we let ourselves be wrong?

Because we've been wrong since forever. And to admit it is such a relief. It's like, OK, I'm never right. Let's let that go. And work with my being wrong all the time to finally get it right. 

NYON DRIP and SHE-DRIP 

If we could just do it by hearing it, it means we don't have many of these. 

But most of us have so many of these. Just to hear it, we go, yeah, that'd be so cool, but I can't do it. We're not bad. We're not weak. It's just that we've got these nasty obstacles.

How do we overcome these obstacles? 

We also have seeds for learning new stuff. 

Because we teach other people new stuff. Especially as parents. You have taught. You've been parents in past lives. You've taught them many things. Parents in this life, you see what you teach your kids. Those seeds are in us as well. 

Teaching others new things means that we can learn new things. 

So we have seeds ripening for learning new things big time right now, manifesting as these classes by studying, learning, applying ourselves about karma and emptiness, about compassion. We are planting seeds that are the opposite to these two kinds of seeds. 

So these seeds that are in us already are losing some of their power by way of our learning new stuff, seeds that are there opposite, reducing their strength. Do you see? So just by studying, learning, applying ourselves, keeping track of ourselves, these are lessening. 

They're not going to go down without a struggle, however. 

They'll come up as: I can't get to class all the time, right? Or I felt too bad to do my homework or… Obstacles come. 

And rather than going, Oh man, I'll never get this right.

Give your SHE-DRIPs and NYON DRIP a name. There's Bob again. Get out. Go to a restaurant, have a nice time while I'm busy studying. Leave me alone. Truly, you could make kind of a game of recognizing your obstacles and giving them a timeout.

These obstacles block us from reaching Nirvana. Meaning they block us from reaching that which we need to reach, that is the state free of any mental afflictions. We'll learn more about it. 

Knowledge obstacles prevent our Buddhahood. mental affliction obstacles prevent our Nirvana, our growth to Nirvana. 

Both of them together prevent our growth of our method side, being able to apply ourselves with wisdom and love to everything that we do. 

So: study, review the three principle paths, work on how our behavior is guided by our understanding of the three principle paths, and use some meditation cushion time to review it all, to think about it all, to plan it all out. 

So these classes are asking you to continue to investigate renunciation. 

To think about what does it mean to renunciate. 

What is it we want to renunciate. 

It doesn't mean running away from the life. 

It's a state of mind or a personal goal that we want to make higher. 

Find what it means for you. 

Then lastly, you have a question that says how was it that Je Tsongkapa was able to write so voluminously, in such deep and incredible ways? When he had no computer and he had no ALL database. How did he do that? 

He either was a speed reader and had a photogenic memory, which maybe he did. Or, they say he had the goodness from past lives and early in his life to actually reach the deity, whose specialty is wisdom —knowledge— directly. 

He reached Manjushri directly, and so then took dictation. 

Sat down one day, each day: I need to write about blah blah blah. 

Tuned himself in and listened, and wrote it down. 

I'll tell you a secret. That's how Puppy Pen Chewtoy got written. 

I had been cooking it, cooking it, cooking it. And we were in a break one day and I couldn't sleep. And about two in the morning, I finally decided I'm just going to get up and meditate, and this voice went off in my head. And three days later the basis of the book was written. I gave it to some people to read and they said that's cool and I put it away for a couple of years until I got a message, through an Angel friend of mine, that it was time to actually produce it. And I found an editor and we just did it. But I didn't write that book. I heard it, and wrote it down. 

So I mean to puny me, if that can happen to puny me, it can happen to you guys. 

You just never think about it. And when, truly it was in great retreat, so it was a state of mind, right? But, I can see the, Oh my gosh. I can understand how it could happen. So they say Je Tsongkapa was taking dictation from the deity of wisdom. 

And that's how he was able to write such extraordinarily rich and deep things. 

We are done. That does complete class two. You have what you need for your homeworks, your quiz, your meditation. 

(Usual closing)

Thank you. Alright thanks again everyone, have a great weekend.

For the recording, welcome back. We are ACI Course One, this is class 3. 

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

[Usual opening]

So now please allow me to read the verses. You listen, thinking about what you know so far. 

I bow to all the high and holy lamas.

As far as I am able I’ll explain

The essence of all high teachings of the Victors,

The path that all their holy sons commend,

The entry point for the fortunate seeking freedom.

Listen with a pure mind, fortunate ones

Who have no craving for the pleasures of life,

And who, to make leisure and fortune meaningful, strive

To turn their minds to the path which pleases the Victors.

There's no way to end without pure renunciation,

This striving for pleasant results in the ocean of life.

It's because of their hankering life as well that beings

Are fettered, so seek renunciation first.

Leisure and fortune are hard to find, life‘s not long;

Think it constantly, stop desire for this life.

Think over and over how deeds and their fruits never fail,

And the cycle is suffering: stop desire for the future.

When you've meditated thus and feel not even

A moment's wish for the good things of cyclic life,

And when you begin to think both night and day

Of achieving freedom, you've found renunciation.

Renunciation though, can never bring

The total bliss of matchless Buddhahood

Unless it’s bound by the purest wish; and so,

The wise seek the high wish for enlightenment.

They’re swept along on four fierce river currents,

Chained up tight in past deeds, hard to undo,

Stuffed in a steel cage of grasping "self",

Smothered in the pitch-black ignorance.

In limitless rounds they're born, and in their births

They are tortured by three sufferings without break;

Think how your mothers feel, think of what's happening

To them: try to develop this highest wish.

You may master renunciation and the wish,

But unless you have the wisdom perceiving reality

You cannot cut the root of cyclic life.

Make efforts in ways then to perceive interdependence.

A person’s entered the path that pleases the Buddhas

When for all objects in the cycle or beyond,

He sees that cause and effect can never fail,

And when for him they lose all solid appearance.

You have yet to realize the thought of the Able

As long as two ideas seem to you disparate:

The appearance of things—infallible interdependence;

And emptiness—beyond taking any position.

At some point they no longer alternate, come together;

Just seeing that interdependence never fails

Brings realization that destroys how you hold to objects,

And then your analysis with view is complete.

In addition, the appearance prevents the existence extreme;

Emptiness that of non-existence, and if

You see how emptiness shows in cause and effect

You'll never be stolen off by extreme views.

When you've grasped as well as I the essential points

Of each of the three principal paths explained,

Then go into isolation, my child, make mighty

Efforts, and quickly win your ultimate wish.

Class 2 Quiz review

So what is that Sanskrit word for the Great Seal? 

[Ale] Mahamudra.

[Lama Sarahni] Mahamudra. And for extra credit, do you remember the Tibetan? Chakya Chenpo. And for extra extra credit, what's it a secret code word for?

[Joana] Seeing emptiness directly.

[Lama Sarahni] Seeing emptiness directly, right. 

So what's the relationship between the three principle paths and Mahamudra, the three principal paths and seeing emptiness directly? How does that work? 

[Joana] If we follow the three principle paths or if we have those realizations, if we work on those, seeing emptiness directly should follow like automatically.

[Lama Sarahni] The three principal paths are planting the seeds for the result of reaching that wisdom. Yeah, nice. 

So what's the relationship between these and successful diamond way practice?

[Chong] Diamond way practice is really based on three principal paths and we can success in diamond way if we practice the 3 principle paths. But if we don't practice 3 principal paths, we won‘t success in the diamond way.

[Lama Sarahni] Right. You know, we think, Oh, diamond way. You get those initiations, you get assigned these tasks and then you get these new vows and yes, that is the training in the Diamond Way. But diamond way is happening when you're bumping into angels, right? You're bumping into these synchronicities. Like, little miracles, right? That's Tantra happening to us. And it's a goodness. So it has to be the result of some powerful kindness done with wisdom. 

So renunciation and Bodhichitta imbued with our understanding of wisdom guides us in our behavior choices, and that goodness ripens as these transformations in our world. 

Usually starts with transformations in others that we see before we see it in ourselves. Sometimes it's the other way around. We can't force it. We can fake it. But when these little miracles happen, that is the diamond way happening. No initiation, no mantra, no nothing. But then you might decide, Oh oh, I want to be able to cultivate this more swiftly, in which case we might want training, but technically speaking, your 3 principal paths done well, you will smoothly travel along your path… or not so smoothly. 

So success in Tantra ultimately means transforming our perception of ourselves from suffering human being to totally enlightened being. That's what Diamond way is for. 

So what are the two main causes of Buddhahood? 

[Claire] Merit and Wisdom. 

[Lama Sarahni] Right, collection of Merit. Collection of Wisdom. 

Technically, at this level, let's call it method and wisdom. We're going to weave it. 

The collection of merit is comes a little bit later. So method and wisdom are the two main causes of Buddhahood. Then within the method side, how does that relate to the three principal paths? 

[Claire] It includes renunciation and Bodhichitta.

[Lama Sarahni] Right. Because that guides our choice in behavior, which is our method side. And so that means wisdom side is gathered by which of the three principal paths? 

[Claire] Correct view.

[Lama Sarahni] Correct world view. Which we need to make the goodness choices in behavior from our renunciation and our Bodhichitta.

So the three are weaved together, as we're seeing.

Now. There are two bodies. There's a division into two of the bodies of a Buddha. What are those two? 

[Ale] Dharmakaya and Rupakaya.

[Lama Sarahni] Right. Dharmakaya means all the books and tapes and audios, right? No, it's the mind of the Buddha. 

And Rupakaya is the form body because they're made of flesh and blood, right? 

No. They're made of goodness. But they may look like flesh and blood. 

But from their side, they are not. They're made of light. Made of goodness. Technically made of love. 

So now, what are the two main causes for these? What's the main cause for the form body, the appearance? And what's the main cause for the Dharmakaya or wisdom body?

Form body is caused by our collection of merit.

And the mind of our Buddha will be made by our collection of wisdom. 

The collection of merit comes out of our method side done with wisdom, so renunciation plus Bodhichitta makes our collection of merit, makes our form body. And our correct world view becoming our direct perception of emptiness is our wisdom, our collection of wisdom, learning to live by it, and that becomes the causes of our omniscience and direct awareness of emptiness all the time of everything. Our Dharmakaya. 

Class 3 official start

The whole point of that, to have that sequence in mind, we can see so clearly that Buddhahood will be a result. Just like non Buddhahood is a result. 

If we want to create Buddhahood we need to know what it‘s a result of so that we can make the causes. And the causes that bring those results are learning to live by renunciation with Bodhichitta and wisdom. 

Once we catch on to that we get a fleeting vision of, Oh my gosh, maybe it's actually possible, right? I see the method, you apply the method, it should work. 

Then our next thought is, Yeah, but I don't know how to do it myself. 

So I need a teacher. And I use a couple of different analogies.

One is, if we were a young person and we were watching the Olympics, and we saw those amazing ice skaters. We were so inspired, our heart said, I want to grow up to do that. Mom, can I take ice skating lessons? I want to do that. I know I can do that. And Mom might say, Yeah, let's check out a book from the library and we'll get you an old pair of skates and see what you can do. 

And we could probably learn how to skate that way, trial and error. But to learn to skate competitively or professionally for a performance, the likelihood of being able to teach ourselves that from a book is pretty remote. Possible, but not likely. 

So at some point we go, Mom, I need a teacher, I need a coach, I need to take some classes. And then we just go to whatever class is available and gets assigned and as we get better and better we recognize, No, I need a kind of coach that I know really knows how to teach me to become an Olympic hopeful. 

That would either need to be somebody who was an Olympic hopeful, who was at the Olympics. Because we would know that they know what it took for them to get there. And presumably they'd be able to teach us the same. 

Or we might think: Well, actually I would like to be trained by the one who trained them. Because they maybe never were Olympic. But very clearly they knew how to teach somebody how to do it. 

So we have these two choices: 

• somebody who's demonstrated their own ability, 

• and others who have demonstrated their ability to teach somebody else in that way. 

My own personal experience has been that I did some athletic training when I was younger and I had two main coaches. 

One was someone who wasn't particularly athletic but broke the steps down and taught herself and taught other non athletes and got competent. 

They got really good at teaching others. 

Then I had another coach who was a natural athlete, an Olympic player. 

And she would just say, ‚Do this‘, and show us, and not being a natural athlete, I couldn't make my body do what she was doing. I had to have it broken down. 

So of my two coaches, one was an Olympic player. One was my mom. 

And the coach that taught the steps made me a much better player than the one that was so good, you see. And it's just for somebody else, it would have been completely different.

So when we're looking for a teacher, there are certain criteria that we want to have in mind so that we invest our spiritual real estate into the hands of someone that we know has either done it themselves or helped somebody else do it or both. Ideally both. 

Then the another analogy that I like to use is sort of to flip it around. 

If we have a new puppy and we don't personally have the discipline to train that new puppy in good manners, we end up with a dog who is misbehaving and unpleasant to be around. 

So we're looking for a teacher who has this discipline, and awareness, and love—like we have for the puppy, that very diligently, sometimes even strictly insists on puppy dog learning how to behave. Then we end up with a happy dog and a happy family, with happy neighbors. Because this dog is well behaved and we can go on to actually train that dog to be a service dog, a seeing eye dog or a really, really remarkable creature.

So we're looking for our own state of mind of, ‚I'm the puppy dog. I need discipline.‘ and we're looking for the human, the master, who has the discipline, knows what the puppy dog needs and is willing to carry it out consistently, regularly, lovingly to help that puppy dog thrive.

We're holding in mind this idea of finding a teacher, our own personal fit teacher. 

We'll take spiritual teachings from many people, and we should. In that case, we should still check out who we will spend time listening to. 

But what we're talking about here is that relationship with the teacher, more like a capital T for us. A teacher-student relationship that's actually already been, because we have seeds for it, because we're here in a class like this and we haven't run away yet. And so, although the person that we finally recognize, we may say, ‚Oh, no, I've never met them before. I don't know them. They're new to me.‘ 

Technically, on this energetic level, they're not new at all, right? 

We've had relationships with them before. 

That's true of everybody, but especially of this one that we call Lama, which is a honorific that means, ‚I consider you higher than me‘. And so we'll see that that's part of the qualities that we're checking, to see that we see in this person that we are at some point going to go and declare ourselves to.

I see you in this way. I see that you see what I need. I'm really ready to make this change, this shift. Please take me as your student. They may or may not say yes. But we keep asking if we're certain that they're the one. We keep asking until we get the answer we want. Or they give you a good reason for why they're saying no. Because maybe they see that there's somebody else meant for you. And they are only the temporary one. They won't necessarily share that with you unless we directly ask but otherwise you keep asking. The answer we get is coming from us. 

There's so much going on in declaring that relationship, especially like in our modern, modern times. For me, growing up as a woman in the 50s and 60s and 70s, there were women 10 years older than me that were already bucking the system about what a woman can and can't do. In my upbringing I had 3 brothers and a younger sister and my parents always said, You could do anything they could do. 

You want to ride motorcycles? Ride motorcycles. 

You can do anything you put your mind to, and just try, just try your best. And whether you're successful or not doesn't matter. Just try your best. You can do anything.

That wasn't common amongst my peers. But it fostered in me a personal responsibility, which is a good thing. And it fostered in me this fierce independence.

So then the idea of devoting myself to a teacher was like: Not for me!

I read about people's devotion and I couldn't relate to that word devotion. 

Because my seeds were such that I had to prove that I could do it myself, said the little red head, which I just had it wrong. You see, it is true. 

We need to do it ourselves. But not without a teacher.

So when we're talking about these qualities of a teacher, we really are talking about the qualities of this being that we are wanting to declare ourselves to, in the sense of: You're the one I need to help me become the being that I see I can be. 

And they'll say, why me? I'm nobody. I'm needing to know. 

And they're not fishing for compliments. They're wanting you to be so firm, in your viewpoint that if they take you on, which they're probably dying to do, they understand that you understand that you have this conviction. That you‘ve made a choice that you will stick with. 

They say commonly, the minute you take a teacher they do something that doesn't look so teacher-ish. And it's our seeds trying to show us we made a mistake or something. And if we're ready and prepared for it, we'll just be able to say, Oh, my seeds, burn them off. Strengthen my devotion, my reliance. 

I like the word reliance on this being. 

Geshe Michael talks about your lama: Find your lama! Find your lama! 

It sounds so urgent. Like you ought to take a month off work and go searching in India because surely that's where they are. 

No, of course not. Yeah, we could search and search and search and never find them because in fact, they live next door all along. Because we didn't have the seeds to see them, we're not going to see them just by going someplace foreign. 

On the other hand it‘s not something to say, When it happens, it happens. I'll be ready. Because that could take a really long time. 

And so somewhere in between is this happy medium. And of course it becomes we don't go looking for them, we create them. And so one way of looking at these qualities of a teacher that we're looking for in them, is to look at these qualities and think, How close am I to any of those? 

Maybe not the specific ones, but how have I helped others in some similar way to this? And rejoice in those seeds to see if we can get them to start ripening into this sense of, Oh that one is my lama. 

We'll talk about it more as we go on.

So we're cultivating this sense of: I need help. 

And then the sense of: Just any old Dharma person won't do. 

Because when we sign on to this relationship agreeable to both, they become a very, very powerful karmic object for us. Which means everything we think, say and do towards them is karmic seeds that are in there really Strongly. 

So negative ones, unless they're very swiftly regretted get big fast. 

Positive ones, especially positive ones that are rejoiced for also get big fast. 

And that's the value of that relationship, is that we're supposed to use them to make our collection of merit to grow our wisdom, to grow our merit. To grow our wisdom to grow our merit into Mahamudra and then into the two bodies of our Buddha. 

And that's what they want us to do, is use them for that purpose. 

It sounds bad. We say, Oh, he used me, and we're mad about it. 

But this relationship, the lama is meant to be used as a powerful karmic object. Which means our relationship with them is to serve them, and that sounds really self-serving from the teachers side, the lama‘s side. Oh great, I have another student and they're going to buy me dinner and they're going to do my laundry.

No, it's not like that at all. 

If we have the circumstances that we are close by, our wisdom would say, Anything I can do for them worldly. I'm gonna do my best to be there.

Can I take you to the doctor? Can I run your errands for you? 

Can I do your laundry? 

And maybe they would just as soon you leave them alone. 

But they'll say yes, OK.

They used to bring their laundry. They give their laundry to somebody else at Diamond Mountain and then because we had a washer and dryer in Menlo house, they would bring the laundry to our house. And the first few times they left it and I did it and I didn't mind. I was happy to. But then Lamas got word of that and they said, No, that person is supposed to do the laundry. 

And so then that person did the laundry and they mixed the colors up and the whites all turned red. 

Sometimes, often, the Lamas will let us do stuff for them that they could do just as easily or more so. Because they know we're getting merit. 

But then we think, well then if I live far away from them, I'm just out of luck because I don't ever get to do the laundry. 

And that isn't the only way we serve them. In fact in secret they say that's kind of a lesser way to serve, because the way they really want you to serve them is to put into practice what they teach us. 

To do that, we don't need to be anywhere close to them.

We need to remember what they taught and try it on for size, and track our behavior. And then remember to mentally mention it to them. 

So if we're thinking the Lama is stuck inside this physical body, we're missing an opportunity. This being who is for us the manifestation of love, compassion, wisdom, who's showing up in a physical body for our benefit, they are not limited to that physical body. They know what you're doing. They know your mind, they're not spying on you, so don't worry when you're in the toilet. 

But they do know. They are aware. Not their personality is not aware. But their bigger being is aware. So when we find ourselves in a traffic jam and gonna be late, and starting to get all worked up about it and we go, Oh silly, these are my seeds. Whatever happens at work is going to be different seeds. I might as well just kick back and enjoy this, and let other people in front of me. Try to relieve the stressor of other people and I'll think, Holy lama, look, I'm trying not to be upset with the traffic because I know it's my own obstacles and I'm happy, even if I get fired from work because it looks like I'm late. 

And they'll just giggle with delight at your practice. And that's serving them. 

Changing our habits. Changing our behavior. And remembering to share it with them makes them so happy. And our own mind is watching. So, we're planting seeds for making offerings to our teacher of our practice. 

Sometimes it's hard to feel like we still have that connection when we don't see them physically very often. At some point, I think you'll recognize that the physical isn't as important anymore. 

Yes, it's still important to still be connected, stay connected, receive teachings from them. But don't feel second class or left out if your relationship with your lama seems more mental. It's it's not imagined. It's very real. Just not physically tangible in that way. 

Don't be in a hurry, was where I was going with that. And Geshela shared the story of Lord Atisha, that Indian Buddhist in India about 1000 AD. He was learning about the Lojong and Bodhisattva behavior, and he'd heard about this thing called Bodhisattva vows. And he knew that there was a teacher teaching Bodhisattva vows in Indonesia. Apparently nobody in india teaching that at that time.

So he decided he was gonna go to Indonesia and ask this guy to teach him about the Bodhisattva vows. And I guess it's a long and dangerous journey to go from India to Indonesia. 

He gets there and he finds the Dharma center. And we would expect him to march right up to the guy, ‚I'm such and such, and I'm here to be taught about Bodhisattva vows. Please teach me.‘

And he didn't do that. He hung around the Dharma center. 

He watched the teacher interact with students, interact going into the grocery store. He watched the students interacting with each other. He talked to the students about their teacher. Geshela said he spied on the teacher. 

He's not spying, right? He's out in the open checking him out. 

And some scriptures say he did that for 12 years before asking for the teachings, others say 12 months, others say six months. I don't know. It makes more sense to me, six months not 12 years, considering all else that Lord Atisha did. 

But anyway, the point is, he waited until he was sure that he wanted to receive the Bodhisattva vows from this teacher. 

And this wasn't talking about declaring himself as the guy the lama, right? 

This was just asking for teachings. 

So it's a little extreme. We don't have to do that, wait six months to take a teaching from Gyelse, if we already trust that Gyelse is going to deliver the message well, which she will. 

The point was to be discerning because to open our mind to the ideas of that the Dharma shares as a tool for helping us make choices of our behavior, we want to have the certainty that what's being taught to us will in fact be beneficial for ourselves, renunciation, and for everybody, Bodhichitta. 

If we were to take teachings from somebody we really admired but we're checking out. And they were to teach us that it was a good thing to steal from the rich to give to the poor. And that they said be sure that every chance you get, you do that. 

Then, because we'd be following our Lama’s advices, we would get really good at stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. 

We would be imprinting in our mind these wrong seeds for getting the happiness that we're wanting. But thinking we're doing something good by following the lama, and it's such a mismatch that some past lifetime when we did that creates obstacles to finding our teachers, trusting our teachers, following our teachers in the future. 

Was there a time culturally where it was just natural to have a sense of devotion to something or somebody, even as a little kid you were looking for your teacher? 

I don't know if there are cultures like that. But if there were, and teachers who were not particularly wisely motivated took advantage of that, those teachers that took advantage would have a big, big problem finding their own spiritual teachers in the future. 

And those that made the mistake of not checking would ripen the good seeds of acting out of devotion, but the bad seeds of not having the discernment as to whether my devotion was well directed or not. 

You can see how complicated it is. And yet, until we're ourselves omniscient, how do we really know? So there are these 10 qualities of a lama. 

Qualities of the being to whom we choose to invest our spiritual real estate in, says Geshe Michael. 

10 qualifications

These teachings come from The Sutra Alam kara.

It looks like all one word, but it's sutra and then Alam Kara and so it becomes a long A here. It's all rolled together, Sutralamkara. 

Written by Master Asanga. Well, really not written down by Master Asanga 350AD-ish. When he was receiving teachings from Lord Maitreya. 

We'll learn the details of that story later, you actually already know them, I'm not sure Chau does but the rest of us do. We'll learn it later. 

Lord Mitra is said to be the next Buddha to walk our earth. 

When there's enough goodness in our Earth world to ripen a fully enlightened being in the apparent flesh walking amongst us, it will be Lord Maitreya. 

Seems like we're pretty far away. I hope I'm wrong. 

Meanwhile, Lord Maitreya is in paradise, watching, waiting, watching, waiting, they say. We did Uttara Tantra, we learned a little bit differently. 

So here's Lord Maitreya saying, here are the 10 qualities we should look for in our teacher. Which by implication, for those of us who already are a little bit more advanced, it means that these are qualities we are wanting to cultivate in ourselves. Because if we're claiming we want to become Buddhas for the benefit of all sentient beings, guess what: We're gonna be somebody's lama.

Sooner or later we're gonna be the teacher for at least one. And these are the qualities that we will need to have.

So beginning class didn't get to hear it that way. More advanced beginning class, think of this in both ways.

So here are the 10. 

[Tibetan for the 10 qualities]

SHE-NYEN = Spiritual guide, spiritual friend

DUL-WA   SHI-WA   NYER-SHI-WA

YUN-TEN   HLAK-PA   TSUN-CHE   LUNG-GI   CHUK

DE-NYI RAP-TU   TOK-PA   MA-KE   DEN

TSE-WA   DAK-NYI   KYO-WA   PANG

DUL-WA = tamed

SHI-WA = peace

NYER-SHI-WA = high peace

LUNG-GI   CHUK = rich in scripture

TSUN-CHE = great effort

YUN-TEN   HLAK-PA = good qualities

MA-KE   DEN = master teacher

TOK-PA = realization

DE-NYI RAP-TU = direct realization of truth

That first word SHE-NYEN, we use that term for this special spiritual guide, this special relationship with this special being. 

Literally SHE-NYEN means close, very close relative. 

Geshela described that we can have brothers, sisters, cousins and not be very close to them in the sense of being like really good friends and inseparable and we share everything, that kind of unconditional love. 

But maybe we had a best friend when we were a little kid, and we weren't related at all, but we wished we were. So we did that ‚prick your finger and you smear‘, you become blood brother, sister. You ever do that? I did with Jackie Savlin. 

It's because we feel this close heart connection with them that's even closer than brother, sister, maybe.

That's the connotation of this SHEN-NYEN. 

We feel so connected to them, so fond, so trusting, so unconditionally loved and loving of them. Our best friend can do some pretty nasty stuff and we don't kick them out until they've done it multiple times. But this SHEN-NYEN: No, no, no, no, no kicking out. 

We could declare ourselves and take a relationship such as this, and it can go sour often, not often. It does sometimes, go sour, and at any point the student is absolutely free to say, I'm out of here. I hope you don't actually say something like ‚I never want to see you again‘, but kind of have that idea and you apparently stop your connection. From the teacher’s side, they understand perfectly what's going on. They understand perfectly what's gonna happen. And they are waiting with open arms for you to come back, whether it's this life or next life or 30,000 lifes later.

They will be there for you with no resentment, no hard feelings, just perfect understanding that we had to go through that. 

So once we take this relationship, it is a forever relationship. It's more important than getting married. But: don't feel trapped. And if you have the sense of ‚Gosh, if I declare myself I'm trapped and what if I make a mistake?‘, notice whether you have that, and wait until you've got it clear. 

But you are always in the driver's seat in your relationship. It's an important thing, to think about the ramifications of that. 

So SHEN-YEN, spiritual friend is what we call it. 

But you see, we've packed that word spiritual friend with so much more than just the words. 

So here are the 10.

1. DUL-WA = tamed

Like the puppy dog is learning self-control, learning to follow commands, and so learning better behavior than if they were left to their own doggy intuition. The little puppy begins to rely upon us. Because we've given the command, sit - stay, and without the command sit - stay, they don't really know what to do. The dog's relying on the master to keep them safe, to keep them in the right direction, to keep them going. They've been tamed when they get to that point. Similarly, you take a wild horse, a Mustang, who‘s run the plains with their group. And then you take them in, and your job is to make them into a pleasure horse. A pleasure horse needs to be trustworthy and sedate, and they're not going to run off at the drop of a hat, they're not going to kick their rider off. 

They need to be taught this relationship with humans. 

It takes effort. It takes love. It takes determination and diligence and step by step. 

So when we sign on with the lama, we're giving them permission from our own side: I'm the wild horse. Please. Train me. DUL-WA.

When we become that reliable, dependable, capable workhorse, we are tamed. DUL-WA’d. It means discipline. It means vinaya. 

It means the teacher has this very strong self-discipline, behavioral self-discipline. They avoid harming others grossly, subtly in any of those ten number two kinds of ways. Because they've been worked on by their lama. 

So DUL-WA, the first of the ten qualities that we're looking for. 

Means: I can watch them, watch their behavior, and see what they do when things are going wrong. 

Do they fly off the handle and blame people and get all upset?

Or do they shift gears? Do they come up with a different solution? 

How did they respond? Do I admire how they respond? 

Are they DUL-WA‘d? 

It's called the first training in the three baskets, the training of moral discipline. 

2. SHI-WA =  peace 

Here this is code for having recollection and awareness well mastered.

So those two words, recollection and awareness, are meditation words that we are cultivating our Drempa and Sheshin that allows us to focus on our topic at hand with single pointed concentration, from which we can reach Shamata, from which we can turn our mind to the lack of self existence of our object. 

But that's not what we're talking about here. 

They have cultivated that on their meditation cushion. But they take that recollection and awareness and hold it off their cushion on their virtuous behavior, on avoiding harming, and collecting merit, doing goodness. Their recollection and awareness of their task at hand is well mastered. 

It is called the second of the three baskets, the collection of meditative concentration. It does refer to on cushion time because without training in it on cushion, we're not going to have it off cushion. 

We don't know what they're doing when they're meditating, but we can tell by way of their apparent awareness and recollection while they're interacting with others.

1, 2 and 3 are behaviors. They're they're mental state as evidence through their behaviors that we can see. 

3. NYER-SHI-WA = high peace

And it's code for the third training, the extraordinary training of wisdom. 

Which at this level means this very strong ability to analyze their reality. Like they're sort of doing it all the time, analyzing their reality to hold in mind that all objects lack self nature and so what they appear as coming from their own past behavior. 

That does get stronger and stronger the better their meditation is. 

And the reaching of Shamata and the subsequent analysis of emptiness with that quality of mind makes their understanding of emptiness all that stronger, even if they've not yet seen emptiness directly. 

All the better if they have. We'll get to it later. 

What we're able to perceive is that it's very clear that they live their life according to their understanding of emptiness. 

So these first three have to do with their own training in moral discipline, meditative concentration and wisdom, and how it shows through their behavior. 

[break]

The next line is the YUN-TEN HLAK-PA TSUN-CHE LUNG-GI CHUK. 

LUNG-GI CHUK is the quality four. 

TSUN-CHE is quality five and YUN-TEN HLAK-PA is quality number six. 

I don't know why it goes backwards in that part of the sentence and forward in the first one. 

LUNG-GI CHUK, that word LUNG, technically RLUNG. 

It means the scripture. It also means the inner winds. Figure that one out. Why are those synonyms?

4. LUNG-GI CHUK = rich in scripture

It means they know the material that they intend to share with their student. 

They know the material that they've been taught, that is what needs to be passed along for the student to be able to pass it along, for their student to be able to pass along, et cetera. They could be, though, really mentally well trained. But if they don't know what to teach or how to teach it, we're kind of stuck, right? 

We go to the ice skater, who's the Olympic athlete, and they just say, Here, do this. And if I try that, I will smash myself to smithereens.

We need them to know what to teach. 

So LUNG-GI CHUK, they are rich in Scripture. 

The teachings themselves, that scripture, says that Buddhism will decline from our world and that first the realizations in people's hearts die out. 

Not meaning you have a realization and you lose it, but meaning our goodness declines such that try as we might, we don't get it. The realizations just don't come. 

Then the ability to concentrate deeply dies out. 

And then the ability to understand the books dies out. 

And once there are books that nobody can read, nobody cares about them anymore, and may disintegrate and are gone.

All of it driven by lack of virtue. You might say more directly by non virtue. 

And then we'll learn about the cycle. It's like, we'll hit rock bottom and then things will grow again. While things are on the upswing, Buddhists can show up. While they're in a particular time of the down stream, they could show up, but usually they wait until things are improving. We'll learn more specifically. 

The point being is that the LUNG, the scriptures, there's a tradition where to speak the scripture out loud is to give a LUNG. 

Traditionally, the first time we hear a scripture, we should hear it from the mouth of a teacher who has received the transmission from their teacher, and they give us this transmission. 

Then, after that we can be the one to pass the transmission along. But culturally, people didn't read, and they didn't have access to the scriptures and so they would invite one of the lamas to their home, and the Lama and his monks would get a meal and their job was to read the scripture or Sutra for instance, and bless the home, and bless the people, and the people would listen to it.

They may or may not understand what's going on, but their belief was that it was a blessing for the scripture to be read out loud in their space. When we understand about vibration and the quality of the wisdom held within those Sutras, and how it goes well beyond the words alone, that to participate in sending that forth out into the world is a really, really powerful way of planting the seeds in our own mind to keep the Holy Dharma available to us. Which sounds selfish at some point, but for us, motivated so that it stays available for everybody. 

So in a sense, David and I sort of put two and two together: When we have one of those auspicious days, merit making day or something, we want to celebrate. We'll get out our Diamond Cutter Sutra and we'll read it out loud. Takes a couple of hours, but it's just like you used to celebrate by making cookies and having ice cream. 

And now we celebrate by reading Diamond Cutter Sutra or Lama Chupa or something, because we understand about the power of the seeds. 

LUNG-GI CHUK, they're rich in these scriptures. They've had training in them, they've studied them, they know. That was number 4.

5. TSUN-CHE = they make great effort

But it doesn't mean they just work really hard. It means they are having a really good time working hard at their teaching. It's similar to the joyous effort, TSUN DRUP in our six perfections. 

It's not just working hard, it's having a good time doing your virtue. 

They have this great deep joy. That's number 5. 

6. YUN-TEN   HLAK-PA = good qualities

Some of us have studied The Source of All My Good. 

HLAK-PA means exceeding good qualities, exceeding my own.

Me, the student, sees my teacher as having good qualities more than I have. 

That makes sense, right? If I'm trying to learn to do that triple Axel thing in my ice dancing, I need to be being taught by somebody who knows how to do it, or could even do a quad. I wouldn't go to somebody who only knows how to do a single to teach me how to do a triple. Same for our spiritual guide. We want to see them as having qualities that exceed our own.

So these first six qualities: They're tamed. They're at peace. High peace, meaning discipline, concentration, mindfulness off the cushion, wisdom as applied to their daily life, rich in scripture, having a good time teaching, practicing, and having higher qualities than me, the student. 

These are six qualities that refer to the qualities of the teacher. The next four have to do with their ability or style of teaching. Which is still their quality, but it‘s different than in the sense of those first six. 

7. MA-KE DEN = master teacher

DE-NYI   RAP-TU   TOK-PA   MA-KE   DEN

It’s all one sentence. The DE-NYI   RAP-TU   TOK-PA is one, and  MA-KE   DEN is another and it's number 7. 

MA-KE DEN means they are a master teacher. 

It is said that a fully enlightened being, when they speak the Dharma—which is all they ever speak—they speak in Sanskrit. But whoever is hearing them, hears in their own language. 

So, all the Buddhas hear Sanskrit. The rest of us hear our own language. 

You wanna TARTUK to add, rejoice in ACI providing translators. That's happening at the same time that ACI is giving the teacher the opportunity to hear themselves speaking in multiple languages at once. I don't actually hear it, but I know it's happening. And it's like, Whoa, this is really cool. I take responsibility for Italian, French, Romanian, Chinese, German. What else have we got going on? Spanish, Russian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian, Japanese. 

So I must know Sanskrit. I just don't hear that coming out of my mouth yet, but not to worry.

The point here is that MA-KE DEN means they have this ability to teach to the level of the student, not just their language, but to the level of the student. Now at some level a master teacher can teach to different levels of students all at the same time. 

One of the ways that one might personally recognize that maybe that teacher is the one for me, when they're giving a teaching to a group, it seems like they're talking to me. Their examples are—they're not looking at me, but it's like they're reading our mind. Well, maybe they are. But the point is we have these kind of unusual experiences. 

At Diamond Mountain we didn't ask questions in class. You were supposed to take your questions to the debate ground and hash them out, figure them out between you, the students. There wasn't: Can you clarify this? I don't understand that. It was pretty strict in that way.

Then, because of what else we had going on, David and I hardly ever got to the debate ground. So I always ended up each semester with a bunch of questions. And I had the opportunity to go into retreat in between each semester, and I've worked on these questions, or that's when the questions would come up, is in retreat. 

I would write them down with this intention to ask the Lamas about it. And then we'd get into classes and they'd be talking about it. Like it would come up in class, all of those questions that had occurred to me. I don't even have to ask out loud. I just have to think it and wait. It wouldn't happen in class, but couple of months later the answer would come. 

Those kind of a master teacher, teaches to the level of the student, even when they're teaching to a group. Because the teacher and student have this relationship such that the student has the seeds to get a personal teaching while maybe everybody else is getting a general one, or half the group or whatever. 

So one of those clues to recognizing maybe they're the one, is this kind of experience with them.

Master teacher in a more worldly idea means that they are able to adjust the teachings as needed for the audience. 

We were attending a public talk by Geshe Michael at EUA, and there were a bunch of people, various ages and he was starting off on this pretty extraordinary topic. I don't even remember what it was. 

About 10 minutes in, he just — without pausing — changed directions, change the topic completely and went in this other direction. It was so clear that it was because he had lost the audience in the first 10 minutes. The vibe wasn't there. They were restless. And he picked up on it. He just shifted, and they engaged. It was such an astounding thing, because if you really didn't know what he was talking about so much, you wouldn't have recognized it. It would have seemed like the one just rolled into the other. But when we were following, it's like completely different topic of conversation. And it worked. It worked really well. 

A gifted teacher, a master teacher can recognize right when they're not getting it across and shift as necessary. And you guys are training ACI teachers, I don't know how you teach that except to help your teachers pay attention and be willing to change, I guess. 

So Ma-KE DEN, a master instructor. 

Number 7 and 8–we're still on that same line: DE-NYI   RAP-TU   TOK-PA

7. TOK-PA = realization

8. DE-NYI RAP-TU = direct realization of truth

Ideally, your personal spiritual guide has seen emptiness directly. Or, somehow it's clear to you that they have a deep intellectual logic induced realization of it. 

Because that can be enough to be revealed through their behavior, that they get it really clearly. Even if we can't confirm that they've seen it directly. 

For reasons that are too involved to go into now, if we were to ask someone that we were checking on about being our teacher to ask them ‚Have you seen emptiness directly?‘, they will skillfully avoid answering us. So it's really hard to confirm or disconfirm, deny whether they've seen an emptiness directly. It's probably better for us to decide we are going to come to the conclusion that they have. Even if we can't confirm it, and just keep watching for clues that maybe they'll let on than it is to assume that they have not. Just in terms of our own seeds planted. Somehow we're not supposed to know, even though it's a huge piece of the quality of the Lama that they've had that experience, because that's like our primary stepping off point for our getting onto the conveyor belt. 

Now, for reasons too complicated to go into, we happen to know that Geshe Michael has had the direct perception of emptiness, July 28th, 1975. Some of us celebrate that as a sacred day. You don't have those sacred days in the Buddhist lexicon, but when you know one, it's not a bad day to get out your Diamond Cutter Sutra and read it out loud to your dog or to your neighbors there out in the park. 

We have a circle park, so everybody drives around it to get in and to get out. There was an anniversary of something. It wasn't that one, but I invited a friend of mine and we went and sat in the Circle Park and read the Diamond Cutter Sutra out loud because we wanted the park to become a sacred place that people now circumambulate. And four days later, I fell down and broke my collarbone. It's one of the teachings in the Diamond Cutter Sutra, is things are going to go sour if you work with Diamond Cutter Sutra. And it's a good thing. It's like, man, that was a year before that effect was done, and I really do attribute it to being so intentional in making that circle park a sacred space. 

Why am I saying that? 

Because quality  number 8 Geshe Michael has. And we have the goodness to have had it been revealed to us. The way I got it is different than the way you're getting it, but it doesn't matter. 

TSE-WA   DAK-NYI   KYO-WA   PANG 

9. KYO-WA   PANG = they are beyond getting discouraged

Beyond getting discouraged means they will never tire of having to repeat their explanation. The student asks again. OK, let's go through it. They won't say, I've told you 1000 times, I'm not gonna tell you again. They just go through it again. 

At another level, should our seeds shift and we walk away, they will not give up on us. From their side, our connection is still there. They are still working for our benefit, and when we come back it will be with open arms, with no reservation, no resentment. Beyond being discouraged—discouraged with themselves, discouraged with the student. 

10. TSE-WA   DAK-NYI = they are the image of love

Meaning it's clear to us that they teach out of love and compassion. Not out of personal gain, not out of getting reputation, not out of wanting to have a gazillion students—not wrongly motivated. 

Purely because they know the value of what they've been given, and they want to share it, they want to give it away. Because they know how powerfully beneficial it can be for everyone involved. Not just you, the student, but everybody in your world. So for them you are their connection to everyone in your world. 

They know everybody. But the way you know everybody is different than the way they know everybody. And they can only get at the ones you know through you. 

So they teach you. You see your whole world differently. You have helped them change all of existence because part of existence is your world. 

Why am I talking about that? 

When we have a teacher-student relationship. It's not just one-on-one. 

It's me and my world to them and their world, of which I am a part. 

And we're growing this relationship and this reliance, and this devotion, and this effort to put into practice what they share with us, knowing that their entire motivation for dealing with us as students is their love and wisdom. Their wisdom sees that our suffering is unnecessary. They see that our ignorance perpetuates it. 

Their love and compassion manifests as them being what they are for us. 

Our seeds manifest how we see them. They're not sitting around thinking, „What do I need to do to stress Ale out today so I can see how she's doing with her practice?“ They are spontaneously, effortlessly being what we need. 

So from our side, it may be that sometimes that ‚The Lama is so nasty to me. They're just constantly picking on me.‘

If we hear stories about how Khen Rinpoche taught Geshe Michael, it just sounds awful. But it wasn't that that was Khen Rinpoche’s technique. It was that's what Geshe Michael needed, and Rinpoche was willing to be that gruff old uncle instead of I'll treat him with kid gloves and everything he does is good.

Whereas some other student maybe would need that, to be pushed. 

The willingness to be what the student’s seeds ripen them as. 

That's probably the hardest part for Lama, because Lama wants to be your best friend. They want you to be happy with them. They want everything to go smoothly, but they don't have control over our seeds. And we might see them doing stuff that it's like, What, are you nuts? 

There was stuff the Lamas had us doing at Diamond Mountain. You know that David and I were administrators. We felt the pressure of keeping Diamond Mountains nonprofit status clean. And it's like, Geshela! We would be struggling with our worldview, I know it's coming from me, but if this goes sour, it's gonna go really, really sour. And curiously, we also had the seeds for lamas to come and apologize to us. 

It was hugely embarrassing. It's like, oh, man, you were reading my mind. I was criticizing you the whole time. Yeah, they knew that. Then why did they condone that and say we're so sorry we put you through that. But it's like: don't do that. 

But they would. And I still haven't figured that one out. 

The whole thing is about seeds ripening for the highest and best, which doesn't always mean pleasant. But when we understand well, it doesn't matter to us, pleasant or unpleasant. 

What matters is what seeds do we plant. And what we plant is towards us serving the Lama when we're trying to behave according to what they teach us.

And that's all they ask of us. They don't expect perfection. They want effort. That's all.

If we try and fail and recognize we've tried and failed and we tell them, they're just as happy with us as the times we say, I tried and I succeeded. Just as happy with our failures, because they're seeing our effort, our purification and merit making process. They see the end result of all of it, they're not stuck in the „Can't tell cause result“. 

But they are stuck in the „they can't make us do anything“. 

It's our choice. 

Image of love. They have only their wish for our ultimate happiness for us. 

Everything they do is motivated by that born of wisdom. 

Our task and our interaction with that Holy Teacher is to remember that. 

Like as a kid when the parents are disciplining us, they can discipline with real anger and we don't get disciplined. They can discipline with love and we get disciplined. 

It's different.

Lamas job is to bring us to our total enlightenment as quickly as we are capable. Our task is to remember that when we take a Lama, that's the job we are assigning them. Help me reach my total happiness. I give you permission to do whatever I need to help me become one who can change my world, before this body dies, if we want to go that far. That's really the basis of this relationship. It's this trust that they are seeing our future Buddhahood already and coaxing us there, no matter what.

So Geshela said, if you haven't met your holy, precious spiritual guide yet in this lifetime that you're aware of, the very fact that you're in this class means you have seeds. And that means you do already have a connection with this being whoever, wherever they are. They know you already, and they're just waiting for your seeds to ripen to recognize them, to bring them into being for you. 

Geshela suggested: 

Pretend that you already have this connection with them. They just maybe are not in the flesh right now. 

Think of some ignorant habit that you have, that you want to change. 

Determine how you're gonna change it by determining what behavior you want to replace it with. When you quit an old habit: if you just quit it and not replace it with something new, we are very unlikely to be successful. But if you replace it with something different, we rewire instead of just trying to detach. So you think of the opposite and imagine, „What would my day be like if my habit was to act this way instead of that way?“

Then set about to watch yourself for the day, and when you manage to do the new behavior instead of the old one, and you realize you've done it—either at the moment or later—just stop and think, Lama, did you see that? I actually did it. Yeah!

And they'll do the same thing. They'll do rejoicing. Rejoicing mudra. Yay. 

Then go on with your day and try it again. 

So pick some little habit that you do all day to try this on for size. Just to see how fun it can be. 

In doing so you're planting your seeds for this relationship to grow, to show up. See them really happy with you. Even when you're saying to them, Oh man, I did that habit more times than I didn't do it. 

They'll say, Yeah, but now you're recognizing it. Yay, I'm so happy with you. 

Let your imagination always be like this unconditional love. They're not going to let you get away with it. But they are still gonna show that they're proud of you for something about it. Try. Just have fun. 

So that finishes the class. In this mornings class I forgot to say, there is a homework question that's not answerable. If it comes up, Ale, Claire, would you say don't worry about that one, leave it blank, don't count yourself off? 

It's the one about the Kalpas. How many kalpas does it take to reach realizations if you don't have a teacher. The point is a long, long, long time, but you can leave that question blank and not knock yourself five points, I say. Because I'm in charge here, OK? And true for the other group too. I probably won't remember on Thursday, but I'll try.

Lama Sarahni’s personal story on becoming a teacher

What I did for the other group—because I also had extra minutes—I explained to them, like David and my background about meeting the Dharma with no intention of becoming a teacher. 

Because, as I said at the beginning, part of learning about the 10 qualities of a lama is what qualities we're needing to cultivate in ourselves. But when we first started studying the Dharma, it was for because we had had some big time suffering and we did have the seeds to think, Oh man, other people suffer way more. 

Like this is the worst thing that's ever happened to me. And way worse things happen to a lot of other people and that is just unacceptable to me. It's got to stop. 

And I had no idea that it actually couldn't stop. But it brought us along the path. So we had already met the Dharma, we had been taught Tonglen.

My first introduction to Buddhism with practice was Tonglen practice. But this was back in 1989-90. There was no literature that you could get that would teach about it. Nothing had been translated, so we had this little group and we were studying a bit, trying to just apply what we had been taught in a weekend about the practice. And going to various teachings by Tibetan lamas that would come into town for a weekend and they would teach in Tibetan with a translator. And because they only had a weekend, they always started from refuge, and you could only get so far at a weekend. Then the next lama would come and he'd start from refuge. And so we learned a lot about refuge. But we never got anywhere, it seemed like.

Still doing Tonglen and not really knowing what we were doing so much, we got this flyer that said ‚Diamond Cutter Sutra being taught in Tucson in English‘. The flyer said ‚in English‘. Because everybody was in the same boat. 

It's by this American Geshe guy. David and I, Whoa, let's go! In English. That's cool. So it was Geshe Michael and his little entourage that were there in Tucson teaching ACI Course 6, The Diamond Cutter Sutra, over two weekends. And it was like, oh man, so much just came together. Looking back, it still was all way over my head. But it was so clear that we got these little glimpses. That we were impressed. And their literature said they had a whole course on Tonglen. Wow, cool, let us get our hands on that. So we ordered it, the audio cassettes and written materials. But they didn't actually have it ready, so they sent us the Lojong course instead— Training a Good Heart. And so our little study group listened to the Lojong. And man, we were hooked. That was so precious to hear that. We didn't do the homeworks and quizzes. We just listened to it again and again and again. And meanwhile Geshe Michael and that group had said ‚We are in Arizona because we intend to do this three-year retreat and we're looking at properties South of Tucson‘. So we said, well, if you end up coming, we live in Tucson, we're happy to help. 

Meanwhile we went to some different teachings Geshe Michael gave. And then, it was October or November, the year before they were going into retreat, they said ‚We really are coming. And we have, 6 yurts, two Mongolian ones and the other pacific yurts that need to be put up in the desert. Do you know how to build the yurt?‘

No, but you know, we'll do what we can. 

So we were going out on weekends, helping this group of people from New York City out in the desert trying to build these yurts. 

They had one guy who was from Canada—who was a builder—and us, who knew how to dig in the dirt and avoid rattlesnakes and cactus spines. But we never built a yurt. 

But we just went out on weekends and we‘d do what we could do, and the yurts got built. Meanwhile, Geshe Michael had said ‚If you want the Secret Teachings, that's my intention to teach those to qualify people when we get out of retreat.‘

We didn't know what the Secret Teachings were, but we were so impressed with his Sutra teachings that it's like whatever it is, we want to be a part of it. 

And he said, well, in order to do so, you need to take all 18 courses, you need to keep your book, you need to meditate daily. 

And we took him literally. So we ordered the whole coursework and we worked. We spent the weekends out at Diamond Mountain, and during the week we‘d listen to the audios, we did our homework, we did our quiz, we did the next one. And then we go on the weekends and interact with the staff, which was Elly and Chuki and Amber and a few other people, Winston and run it by our understanding, and they would teach us the practice modules. So the Source of All My Good, the Death Meditation, the Heart Sutra, all of those practice modules that we will do together, we got taught by them in the evenings when we were out there working. 

Eventually we did the three review courses with them so that we were ready when Diamond Way was ready, when Geshe Michael was ready. 

Meanwhile, still all the focus was our practice, our study, right? 

We were students there. But along the way there was a group of people in Sierra Vista, which is an hour and a half drive south of us who I don't know how they got my name, but they said any chance you could come and teach the ACI?

And I‘d say I'm not a teacher, but I'll have my notes. I have time. I went. Curiously, they held the classes on the military base there. There's an army Fort in Sierra Vista and I go, get on the base and go to their Chapel, and we taught Buddhism at an Army base in Arizona, which I think is extraordinary. So, I started sharing the ACI with these people. I was no teacher. I didn't intend to be a teacher. I still didn't see myself as a teacher. I was just sharing what I knew because they asked.

Long story short, we ended up living at Diamond Mountain, a different area than where their retreat was and in between the terms everybody left, there were a few of us there. David or I, one or the other would go into retreat. And then the other one would run the place and then we'd switch.

A year or so into that, a group of people from El Paso said, We'd really like to study the ACI courses, can somebody come to El Paso? Everybody else was going with Geshe Michael and their teachings. We were the ones there. It's like. OK. 

Again not because we were teachers, but just because we were available. 

So David and I would alternate. I'd go for one course like every weekend until we got them finished and then David would do it in between our terms. 

So we took a group through start to finish, 1 through 18. 

It took like 3 ½, 4 years, all the while that we were studying at Diamond Mountain. And then we went into retreat, like we were just getting going. David had been asked to go to.. It was asked from South Africa, would somebody come teach the Dharma? And nobody wanted to go. No. Brian Smith went once. When David said, I'll go. 

So four years in a row, he went and taught the review courses in South Africa. 

So he had students there. And then we went into retreat. So three years gone and when we came out, it was like, OK, what's next? Still not really intending to be teachers. I was looking at opening a Buddhist care home for seniors. For senior monks and nuns, is what I wanted to do. David started writing another military history book. 

Then we got asked to teach. And then again. And then again. And then again. And then all of a sudden it's like there's no time to do anything else. 

My point is: I didn't set out to be a teacher. 

Education was not my training. I was into healing. 

But seeds shifted and shifted, and shifted, and shifted, and all along the way we could have said no, no. But when you understand how the whole system works, it's such a gift to get to share. And yeah, it takes hours to prepare your notes the first time, but the way we learn is by sharing, right? 

And still, every time I hear myself deliver a class, I learn something. 

Every time I review my notes, I think of some different way of sharing the material. 

Every class is different. And I'm learning. I still learn. I'm a slow study. I've been through the ACI full series like 8 times, because that's what it takes for me. 

All you're required to do is once. But more is better. 

My point is: Keep an open mind for when the time comes that somebody says ‚Would you share that stuff with me?‘ 

It doesn't mean you're signing on for a 20 year stint with them. It just means, yeah, here I have my notes, like Rachana‘s notes are extraordinary. I have Rachana’s notes. Let's sit down and then deliver them to the person. You can just read them if you want. Or you can read and then say it in your own words. You can think of yourself as sharing, not teaching. 

I find that to be better heart opening anyway. I'm not a teacher of the Dharma. I'm a sharer of the Dharma. It's just awkward. 

So keep your mind open to sharing someday with others and all that we learn about qualities of enlightened beings. We're thinking of them out there, but think of it as ‚these are qualities I will have too, that I'm learning how to cultivate by planting seeds. And this teacher is the one who I have given the power to to teach me that.‘

And now we know what qualities to look for in them. Which means which qualities to create in ourselves. Got it?

All right. So that said, remember that one that you wanted to be able to help at the beginning of class? 

We have learned stuff that we will use sooner or later to help them in that deep and ultimate way, and that's an extraordinary goodness, so please be happy with yourself. 

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. 

Grow your gratitude to them. 

Your reliance upon them. 

And ask them to please, please stay close. 

To continue to guide you and inspire you. 

And then offer them this gemstone of goodness. 

See them accepted and blessed. 

And they carry it with them right back into your heart. 

See them there.

Feel them there. 

That love, that compassion, that wisdom. 

Tingling. Glowing. 

It feels so good. 

We want to keep it forever. 

And so we know to share it. 

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

may all beings complete the collection of merit and wisdom, 

and thus gain the two ultimate bodies 

that merit and wisdom may. 

So use those three long exhales to share this goodness with that one person. 

To share it with everyone you love. 

To share it with every being you've ever, ever seen or heard of. 

See them all filled with happiness, filled with wisdom. 

Sharing it with others. 

And may it be so. 

So thank you, thank you, thank you.

We are ACI course 1 class 4, July 27 2023.

Let's gather our minds here as we usually do. 

[Usual opening]

Now listen to our verses, please. 

I bow to all the high and holy lamas.

As far as I am able I’ll explain

The essence of all high teachings of the Victors,

The path that all their holy sons commend,

The entry point for the fortunate seeking freedom.

Listen with a pure mind, fortunate ones

Who have no craving for the pleasures of life,

And who, to make leisure and fortune meaningful, strive

To turn their minds to the path which pleases the Victors.

There's no way to end without pure renunciation,

This striving for pleasant results in the ocean of life.

It's because of their hankering life as well that beings

Are fettered, so seek renunciation first.

Leisure and fortune are hard to find, life‘s not long;

Think it constantly, stop desire for this life.

Think over and over how deeds and their fruits never fail,

And the cycle is suffering: stop desire for the future.

When you've meditated thus and feel not even

A moment's wish for the good things of cyclic life,

And when you begin to think both night and day

Of achieving freedom, you've found renunciation.

Renunciation though, can never bring

The total bliss of matchless Buddhahood

Unless it’s bound by the purest wish; and so,

The wise seek the high wish for enlightenment.

They’re swept along on four fierce river currents,

Chained up tight in past deeds, hard to undo,

Stuffed in a steel cage of grasping "self",

Smothered in the pitch-black ignorance.

In limitless rounds they're born, and in their births

They are tortured by three sufferings without break;

Think how your mothers feel, think of what's happening

To them: try to develop this highest wish.

You may master renunciation and the wish,

But unless you have the wisdom perceiving reality

You cannot cut the root of cyclic life.

Make efforts in ways then to perceive interdependence.

A person’s entered the path that pleases the Buddhas

When for all objects in the cycle or beyond,

He sees that cause and effect can never fail,

And when for him they lose all solid appearance.

You have yet to realize the thought of the Able

As long as two ideas seem to you disparate:

The appearance of things—infallible interdependence;

And emptiness—beyond taking any position.

At some point they no longer alternate, come together;

Just seeing that interdependence never fails

Brings realization that destroys how you hold to objects,

And then your analysis with view is complete.

In addition, the appearance prevents the existence extreme;

Emptiness that of non-existence, and if

You see how emptiness shows in cause and effect

You'll never be stolen off by extreme views.

When you've grasped as well as I the essential points

Of each of the three principal paths explained,

Then go into isolation, my child, make mighty

Efforts, and quickly win your ultimate wish.

Hopefully we're growing a bit in our understanding of those words, although we've barely gotten into it, if you noticed. We're using it to build this foundation of our foundation database for our personal AI, we're putting in the information we need.

Last class we talked about the qualities of the teacher. Meaning in particular that special being to whom we are going to commit ourselves in a relationship with them to entrust our spiritual real estate to them—with the belief, the understanding, the conviction that they have only our reaching enlightenment in mind for us.

And that everything they then do for us, that looks to us like they do to us, is in order to move us along our path. It's not always going to look that way. It's not always even gonna be pleasant. Necessarily depends on our seeds, of course. 

There's criteria for the qualities of this particular teacher-student relationship that we're looking to establish if we don't have it already. 

But then to a more advanced class, such as you guys, be thinking as well that those qualities of a lama are what you are aspiring to cultivate in yourself.

They are the qualities that are us moving along the path. They allow us the seeds for being that for someone else—which is we'd have to say that real causes for our own spiritual progress is helping somebody else make theirs.

There were those ten classical qualities of the teacher. 

Six of them relate to their own qualities that we see in them, and four of them relate to their ability to teach. 

Somebody give me three of the first six. 

[Luisa] Tamed morality

[Lama Sarahni] Tamed morality. 

[Luisa] The joy of teaching. 

[Lama Sarahni] That's one of the last four. Give me three of the first six. 

[Luisa] The meditative and the mindfulness, and meditative concentration. 

[Lama Sarahni]  So you've got ethics, you've got meditation. What's the third basket? Wisdom. These three, we're able to see from their behavior that they hold themselves to a high level of morality, they're tamed. They're at peace. We can see by their behavior that they have a high level of mindfulness of their ethics. The mindfulness that's required for us to make wiser choices. We don't know what they're doing on their meditation cushion. So we can't really judge their meditative concentration. 

But we can watch their behavior and see that their mindfulness off the cushion is at least a whole lot better than my own. Which implies that their mindfulness on their cushion is probably also a whole lot better than my own. So maybe they can teach me how to do that. 

Then the third one is that they use their understanding of the lack of self nature of things in themselves to make those choices of behavior. 

So again, that's something that we're watching this potential person and we're seeing how do they respond to situations. And we're using our own judgment from what we've been taught by them or others about what it means to behave according to understanding emptiness and dependent origination. 

We would see them responding in situations in a way that was different than what we would expect from a ordinary human being. 

So the first three. 

Second three, having to do with their qualities. Something about comparing them to ourselves. 

[Joana] They are exceeding our qualities. 

[Lama Sarahni] Right. They have exceeding qualities, exceeding me. Makes sense. What's another one? 

[Ale] They never stopped loving us. 

[Lama Sarahni] Not in the second set of three. 

[Chong] Rich in scripture.

[Lama Sarahni] Right, rich in Scripture. They know the classical stuff to share with us. And the third one: the deep realization of suchness. They've either seen emptiness directly, or we believe that they have. 

The third of the first six is that they have that deep realization of suchness. 

The first six: They're controlled. They are at peace. They're at high peace. They have exceptional qualities, meaning higher than our own. They are rich in scripture. And they're rich in wisdom, they've either seen emptiness directly or have confirmed it again and again with their clear thinking. 

[Luisa] In the answer key they are swapped. In the answer key the joy of teaching ist the fifth one. I just checked.

[Lama Sarahni] When you are grading yourself it doesn't matter whether you have them in order, so it's OK with me. The answer key says number 5 is this one number six is that one. But when we're organizing it in our mind, look at your notes from what I said in that order. 

Then the last four have to do with their ability to teach. And that's where they're the master teacher. Well, you tell me, what's those last four? We're doing your quiz, not me. I just gave it away. 

[Ale] They never give up. 

[Lama Sarahni] They never give up as one of them. 

[Joana] They can teach up to the capacity of the student, so the master teacher.

[Lama Sarahni] Master teacher. 

[Chong & Joana] The image of love. 

[Lama Sarahni] Image of love. You all said it at the same time. Yay. 

[Claire] They are not discouraged to give us explanations again and again. 

[Lama Sarahni] Yeah, never discouraged. 

Master Teacher. Joyous effort. Oh, did we say that? They never tire, right? Yeah. Image of love and beyond getting discouraged in some combination of those four. 

All right, Good job. 

For extra credit, who taught that originally? Trick question. 

[Ale] The the gentle voice?

[Lama Sarahni] Lord Maitreya to Master Asanga. That would be a fun debate. Who taught it to us? Arya Asanga or Lord Maitreya? Anyway, it doesn't matter.

Once we understand the importance of this connection with a teacher, our next natural question might be: How do I know for sure that what they're going to teach me is accurate, valid, that is really gonna help me? It's kind of like we have to have already studied a lot and found a teaching that we trust, and then we go looking for the teacher to teach it to us. So you see that actually. There'll be many people we take teachings from. But this one that we're talking about is the one that maybe we find after we finish our ACI courses. They're gonna take us deeper. 

So until we really understand all this criteria and how to apply it, don't rush yourself into committing yourself to either a Dharma path or to a teacher-student relationship. But I'm sort of preaching to the choir because you guys have already studied enough. You presumably have some inkling of the authenticity of the teachings that we're receiving. Because here you still are after all we've all already done. 

So in a way pretend you don't know as much as you know. But then in another way, think of it as preparing yourself for your students and how you're going to help bring them along from beginning to complete. Because we need to be able to confer to them this confidence in what's being taught. 

So this next subject is how do we know, what are the characteristics of authentic teachings, authentic Dharma.

When we use the word ‚Dharma‘, we presume that we're talking about the Buddha Dharma. But we can use the term Dharma just for any spiritual teachings. Actually the word also can just mean all existing things. 

So we're talking here about: How do we judge a set of teachings, so that we know that when we commit ourselves to it, we're not going to go in the wrong direction. We're not going to waste our time, we're not gonna waste other people's time, that it's authentic. 

As I said, it kind of implies that we need to know about it first. Which we could go in a whole different direction. We have to have the seeds inside already. But the seeds that come out are going to be have grown, so we didn't know what exactly as we shared with others.

We need to look at what makes an authentic set of teaching. And we have criteria because we're Gelugpas. So this topic of consideration is NYAM-SU LEN-JAY CHU.

NYAM-SU LEN-JAY CHU

CHU = Dharma

LEN-JAY = that we can practice 

JAY CHU = a Dharma we can practice, meaning a Dharma that when we practice it it will work. 

NYAM-SU = which you

So the whole thing is: 

NYAM-SU LEN-JAY CHU = a Dharma, which is worth studying, what are the criteria for the Dharma that's worth our time

There are three pieces of that. I didn't write out the Tibetan for this long explanation. I'm just going to read it to you for the blessing of the language. 

(Lama Sarahni reading the tibetan) 

What it says is, we can practice for 1000 years a Dharma which has no authentic source. But we will not develop one sliver of authentic realization. 

What it means is: We can't churn water to make butter. We can churn and churn, and churn, and churn, and we will never make butter out of churning water. 

We want to practice a set of teachings that when we churn it the result will eventually be the goal we set out to gain. 

This whole class sounds to me from just the words that we're saying there is no other spiritual progress teachings that will work. This is the only one. And of course that's a misunderstanding of the explanations.

The important piece here is that fora a Mahayanist, the goal of our spiritual path is total enlightenment. Maybe for other people, their goal of their spiritual path is not understood to be that. Maybe their goal is reaching their own personal peace. Maybe their goal is helping climate change be repaired. Maybe their goal is having a direct one-on-one relationship with God. And when they reach that, they've reached the goal of their progress. So whatever teachings help them reach that, was successful for them, it was a useful Dharma for them. But it wouldn't be for us because our goal is Buddhahood. So with that in mind we want to be sure that the teachings we practice can in fact result in our total Buddhahood, so that everybody can benefit from that. So keep that in mind. 

Geshe Michael tells us that these teachings of the ACI courses are authentic. He says ‚We study them. If we study them and practice them, our lives will change‘ 

And that's the point. They'll change all the way up to total Buddhahood if we keep with it. 

So what makes a Dharma authentic versus not?

Our mind takes on the qualities of what we expose it to. So we want to expose our mind to really pure things. 

The three qualities of authentic Dharma

1. TUNPA SANGYE KYI SUNGPA = it was spoken by Lord Buddha

TUNPA = teacher

But TUNPY SANGYE means Teacher Buddha, which means The teacher—capital T. So when we see the term TUNPA in this tradition, even if it doesn't say SANGYE after that, we know this is the honorific teacher. We mean Buddha. 

TUNPA SANGYE = The teacher, the Buddha. 

KYI SUNPA = spoken by

So the first characteristic of an authentic Dharma is, it was spoken by Lord Buddha. Well, how do we know? We are told anything that's called a Sutra, almost, are words spoken by the Buddha. But Buddha never wrote them down. How do we know for sure that those things everybody calls Sutras are really words spoken by the Buddha if he didn't actually write them down and leave them for us. The tradition says, those beings who had sufficient goodness to be the ones to whom Lord Buddha showed up. Part of that sufficient goodness was this quality of mental function to remember every word that they heard. Wouldn't that be extraordinary? 

I knew some fellow students in my past who had a photographic memory. They could read something once, and then they could see it and write it back down again—whether they understood it or not. 

I was like, Wow, because I had to read things 50 million times before I could remember anything at all, and they could just do it. But what about hearing? 

Do we remember every single word that Mom told us? No. I can't remember what David said 10 minutes ago. But at some point, and at some point in our practice, actually, we will have the experience of remembering every Dharma teaching that we received. So presumably these people who were the ones that finally wrote the Sutras down after Buddha passed, were at that level of spiritual practice that they could recall it and wrote it down. That's why many of the Sutras say something like ‚Once thus I heard, once I heard‘. Heart Sutra starts something like that, right? 

The person who's writing it down says ‚I was there. This is what I heard him say‘. That's the Sutras that we have. 

I guess we need to trust that nobody in that capacity would make up a Sutra and call it a Sutra and say ‚This is what I heard Lord Buddha say‘, because at that level of goodness you would know better. 

It really seems inside our arguments: Believe this stuff because it's believable or something weird like that. And we really do need to work with that, and we'll learn as we go through these courses. 

Of all Buddha‘s teachings—of which they say there were 84,000 teachings that Lord Buddha gave in his 50 years of career—all that we have still existing written down is 1108 books that are in the Tibetan. 

Apparently that Tibetan collection is the biggest collection of all the different languages that Buddha’s Sutras have been translated into over the years. 

That collection of Lords Buddha’s words is called the Kangyur. 

I kind of remember it thinking, King-Kong-ygur. King Kong is the biggest, so that belongs to Buddha. 

Tangyur means the commentaries. Primarily the commentaries of the Indian masters who made their progress after Shakyamuni, and wrote their stuff down and we'll see how they made it into what's called the Tangyur. But they are commentaries on the Sutras and the commentaries on other commentaries. 

There are 3400 of those in the collection called the Tengyur. 

They are commentaries on the Sutras, and commentaries on the Tantras, they are commentaries on Perfection of Wisdom, on Middle Way, on Abhidharma, on Mind Only... All these different topics that we study, they are commentaries discussing them. The information originated from the Sutras. 

So in the commentaries, stuff is not made-up. It's explained. Because if you've ever read the sutras, they're pretty cryptic. Within the Tangyur there are also teachings and guidelines about the minor sciences that Buddha did also teach about in his career. These are commentaries about those things like Sanskrit language, medicine, Fine Arts, architecture, city planning, that kind of stuff—also in the Tangyur. 

So quality number one was: They were spoken by the Buddha. Because a Buddha is by definition omniscient and omniscient means they are aware of what we each need to give up and take up to reach our own full Buddhahood. And they were aware of that back then when Shakyamuni Buddha was teaching. 

But there wasn't even a Me. Well, wait, yes, there was, if I'm thinking of me in a more accurate way. 

So we're relying on the words of an omniscient being for our own guidance.

Second quality of the Dharma we're going to trust is

2. PANDITE KYUN SELWA = corruptions have been cleaned out by wise people

Wise people aren't going to go to the Buddha‘s Sutras and clean them out. But they'll go into the Tangyur, the commentaries and check them, compare them, check them according to their own wisdom, their own realizations, their own progress on the path, their own teachings that they've learned. And when they find inconsistencies, errors, somebody's own personal opinion about something, not clarified as a personal opinion about something, then those commentaries got cleaned up. 

It apparently happened in time frames. We're talking about the Indian commentaries that were being gathered and then from time to time a bunch of realized beings would get together and they'd check these and make sure that they're not getting infused with personal takes. Without the personal take being clarified ‚This is my personal take‘. 

[Ale] It's like when Geshe Michael find the errors during the Mixed Nuts in some translations and he makes notes?

[Lama Sarahni] What Geshe Michael is finding is like typo errors, mostly. Because the carvings are so difficult and the person carving actually couldn't read what they were. They didn't know what they were carving right, so you could get a word wrong, the letter wrong, stuff like that. I believe Geshe Michael is really, really careful not to change the content. But to clarify from comparing other ones, that this has to be a typo, because this one has it this way and that one has it that way, which maybe there's three different ways. And then, because of his wisdom, he can be able to say ‚This one is more fitting of what's being taught, then that one.‘ 

But I don't think that any given person, even Arya level, would presume to go in and clean up a commentary without running it by other wisdom beings. This apparently was some group of panditas, wise people, who set about to clean up that Tangyur. It's been done multiple times, apparently. The point being, knowing that that has happened and does apparently still happen, we should be able to trust the Dharma that our teacher is sharing with us. But it's like: That's not proof, that's just belief, right? I'm giving you reasons to believe what I say, and even Buddha says don't believe it because I said so. But these scriptures have been cleaned up. And students are trained to make it clear when they're teaching the scripture versus teaching their own personal experience about it—their way of explaining it. Making that distinction clear, I try to do that. I hope I do that. We don't want to be putting together our own philosophy and then go off to a different direction.

[Luisa] Two questions. The first one is, Kangyur is the Sutras and Tengyur is the commentaries?

[Lama Sarahni] Correct.

[Luisa] And the second one is we have to trust the teachers and the teachings or these commentaries don‘t have any wrong content because they were wise people. But those wise people are coming from us and we also have bad seeds from being corrupted and lying and so on. So how can we trust that?

[Lama Sarahni] Right. Be trustworthy.

I know it's confusing. We want these teachings to be so black and white. 

‚Just tell me what I have to do. I'll apply those criteria and then I'll know.‘

And then when we get into them, it's still shades of gray. 

You're right to point that out. Work with it, and something will shift because it is our seeds. Something will happen that becomes clear to you that verifies that these teachings are for you. These are the ones for you. And if that doesn't happen, and don't like set a date—it needs to happen by December 31st this year. I'm out of here—but have an idea that: I'm not going to keep spinning my wheels if I try and try and try, and I'm just not getting anywhere with this path.

This path is the highest, it's the most authentic. It's going to work. But not from its own side. Does that mean it doesn't work at all? No, it means it can work and you have the seeds to hear about teachings that can work. But you're right, we all have the seeds to have been duped by teaching. 

[Luisa] But Lama if I am a Catholic and I believe in God so strongly like my mother-in-law, she's a fanatic, and then it could happen also that she could reach Buddhahood from Catholic path because it‘s not coming from itself?

[Lama Sarahni] Yes. (Laughing) No way, says Luisa. 

They wouldn't call it Buddhist, right? And it may not be possible from a Catholic perspective because they are not setting their goal in helping other’s being to become Jesus. Their goal is to sit at the feet of Jesus when they die. And to reach that goal won't be their Buddhahood. But they can reach their goal at the feet of Jesus. 

[Luisa] The thing is that at the end it's a bit conflicting for me. We are saying that we don't want to have this kind of arrogance, that what we are following is their path. However, is always said in all the teachings that our main mistake is the ignorance, which means this Catholic path is also ignorant in a way because they are not thriving for riching Buddhahood, who don't understanding that what they see is coming from themselves. So how not to kind of say ‚We are the ones who are right‘?

[Lama Sarahni] Exactly. To recognize how not to do it is to recognize that we're doing it. And I admit that inside I have this constant ‚I know better. I know better. I know better.‘ Catching that and overwriting it with ‚No, I don't.‘

The path that helps somebody is the highest path for them in that lifetime. 

So another factor in this importance of the wise people have cleared out corruptions, is that in the course of the evolution of the teachings through the devolution of the ages, Dharma rumors get promulgated.

Geshela pointed out three that, even back in the 90s were common and probably still are to some extent. 

Dharma rumors

Dharma rumor #1

One of those is that reaching Nirvana means reaching nothingness. 

Nirvana means to blow out beyond all grief like ‚puff, you're just done‘. 

We've already learned about Nirvana, and we know that that's not at all what Nirvana means, that Nirvana is a state of mind that's free of all mental afflictions because of having reached the direct perception of emptiness and then living according to that new wisdom to burn off our mental afflictions and seeds for more until there is no more that can ripen. 

That's not disappearing. That's probably finally really living. 

Dharma rumor #2

Then another Dharma rumor is that emptiness just means voidness. The words that are translated do mean voidness. Voidness means vacuum, nothing. There it is again: gone, blank, not even blank—absent. 

And emptiness is not that, as we understand pretty clearly, I hope, that emptiness is the absence of some specific thing that we thought was there, have always thought was there, and now we're recognizing how ridiculous that was to think that. The thing I thought was so substantial and constantly present is not just not there, but it's completely impossible. 

What am I talking about? Anything that has its identity or qualities in it, coming at me. Like what kinds of things? Like every instant of every experience that we have. 

So emptiness is a sheer absence, but that absence of anything’s nature in it. 

Which is not void. It's not a vacuum. 

Dharma rumor #3

Then the third Dharma rumor is that Buddha nature, the fact that every conscious being has Buddha nature already means that they're already a little Buddha and they just have this covering of mud and selfishness that you just have to clean out. We could make the case that, OK, that's correct. I do need to clean out all my negative seeds. But just cleaning out won't reveal our Buddha. We have to create it. 

The Buddha nature that we do have already is the lack of self nature, of our Me, of our mind, of our body, of our everything. That lack of self nature means that what I appear as is forced on me by my ripening karmas. 

So I have the potential to make the karma’s merit that will force me to see myself as Buddha, but that's different than unveiling the one that's already in there. 

And yet in that Uttara Tantra teaching it sure sounded like they were talking about having this little Buddha that's all covered up. Remember we had all those images? 

Those images were not literal in that way.

Those wrong ideas creep into the teachings. 

I still see this one about Buddha nature as I'm scrolling through Facebook and somebody posts something, somebody outside of our lineage, and oh, Buddha nature. Then I see this whole list of people that go, Wow, that's so cool. I never thought of it that way. 

It's bad fitting them, somebody, in that way, but it's like our particular training is so accurate that we hear something like that and go ‚What are they doing right?‘ 

Then our task is to stop and say: ‚Well, that being who's posting it knows more than me, and knows that they're gonna plant a seed in somebody's mind that will help them grow beyond this. Like knowingly putting up something not quite right in order to plant a seed in somebody's mind.‘ 

Buddha did that all the time. It's called skillful means. 

It's helpful to know, be able to recognize when skillful means is happening. 

So we keep this healthy skepticism, maybe is a good word, when we're seeing teachings from other traditions. To catch ourselves from judging and saying: ‚Oh, that's just wrong‘ to ‚Wow, how can I understand this such that I can see how it's benefiting people in that tradition and still understand it from the perspective of my own tradition?‘

There is a point where our friend and student Carlos, his wife is a catholic, and she teaches a prayer life practice in order to cultivate your direct connection with Jesus or Mother Mary or right, whoever you're connected with.

It's blessed by the church she's a part of, but it's like learning how to bypass the priest, right? So she teaches it in Spanish. And she wanted to practice teaching it in English. So she asked David and I, would you guys be willing to take my course? It's 16 weeks and let me practice on you?

sure, we‘d be happy to. And she taught us the Bible and she taught us prayer practice, and she used all these beautiful different methods to find the one through which we connect with this being we can't see. Some people do it through auditory, music, some do it through imagery, some do it… 

In the process of doing it, we were reading from the Bible and it was like, Oh my gosh, there's emptiness and dependent origination all over in there. I've never seen it before. I'd always just…nah. But once you know, you can't not see it everywhere. Which is kind of fun. 

We are learning this criteria, but at the same time we want to learn not to then disrespect the other traditions. We have a vow against it anyway. Let's take a break. And we'll do the 3rd.

[break]

3. DRUPPAY WANG CHUK GI TOKPA - a master practitioner has used these teachings and gained realizations

The third characteristic of a qualified set of teachings. That doesn't sound right, but what we're talking about, DRUPPAY WANG CHUK GI TOKPA.

TOKPA = realizations

DRUPPAY WANG CHUK TOKPA = a master practitioner has used these teachings and gained realizations 

It's not a word for word. Word for word it says: realized practitioner total control by them realization. That's not English. It's trying to say, a serious practitioner used these teachings and gained realizations as a result. 

They didn't start out realized. They became realized by relying on these teachings.

So meaning the third characteristic of an authentic spiritual training program is that it works. If we apply ourselves, it will work. 

We already know the punch line, what it means to apply ourselves. Learn it, help others in their search for happiness, and apply all the principles that we learned to helping others.

If we hear about it, we think about it, we meditate on it, and we live by it, it will liberate us. Because our own seeds, right? We'll plant our own seeds that will liberate us. So if we have an understanding that there are beings who have done that, then it helps us be able to apply ourselves in similar ways. And there's lots of different biographies of the Mahasiddhas, biographies of different teachers that, personally, when I read those biographies, I get really discouraged. Cause it's just like: I can't do all that. Almost so often they say, yeah, well, when they were born, shooting stars showed up in the sky and rainbows happened and they were magical from the get go. Well then, how does applying the teachings for their success really apply to me? If I was just this ordinary little kid all my life. Ordinary, according to who? 

Yet, to me it's always a little bit discouraging. 

But at least there are stories about people who have used these teachings and gained their enlightenment. It took me a while before I really read some of those and recognize that it really does happen to people that weren't born as their 5th reincarnation. Already in their last seven lifetimes, ones that aren't there yet. And there are a few of those stories. I can't remember off the top of my head which ones, but I remember in retreat, when we had break time, I grab a book out of the Librarian, read about these. 

The idea is, if we can find somebody for whom these have worked, those are my seeds. So I can use admiration and rejoicing for that one to help grow my seeds so that they can work for me too. 

And we have Geshe Michael. And that unique situation in which we have received confirmation that he saw emptiness directly for the first time. Not first time in this lifetime, from the lifetime before. But you would know. But the first time for that mindstream on July 28th, 1975.

So tomorrow. Oh, special. It's also Seiju. Making myself a note. 

Do something special tomorrow, something especially virtuous. Read the Diamond Cutter Sutra out loud, someplace where a bunch of people walking by will overhear you. They won't sit there for the whole time, but words will go away. In the supermarket. Just an idea. And dedicate it to everybody reaching truth. And you're part of everybody. Yeah, cool. 

Geshela said, test these concepts out. Like we've been working with renunciation a little bit. We haven't even started talking about it too much yet. But we work with this idea of renunciation and what does it really mean to me, and how do I apply it? How does it help me change my choices and what do I expect from it? 

Just work with that exclusively for a while and see what happens. 

Don't set out an expectation this has to happen in order for my renunciation to be being powerful. Just watch how your attitude shifts, your interest shift maybe. 

Maybe what comes, shifts. Just watch with this unplanned, unknown, un- judgmental as you work with the idea. And make some notes so you can come back to it sometime—if you ever need to. 

Then you know by the time that's gotten boring, we'll be onto something else, probably six more things by then, but if you find that all my work with renunciation is really, really working for me, even as we're going to these other topics, stay focused on the renunciation and weave the other ones into it. We can do that. We'll learn how to do this. 

The qualities of a student

Once we understand a little bit about the criteria for an authentic Dharma, the next piece of the puzzle is: Yeah, but what about me as the student? 

How do I know if I'm really qualified to practice these teachings. 

What criteria do I need to have as a student? 

We already learned what qualities not to have. 

Which was don't be like a teapot with a lid on. 

Don't be like a teapot that's got old moldy tea leaves in it.

And don't be like a teapot that's got a whole cracked in the bottom. 

The lid on keeps us from being open minded enough to hear new. 

The grimy stuff inside is like wrong motivation. 

The hole in the bottom means it just leaks in and leaks out. We don't make that effort to retain it. 

These instructions are what to be like. What qualities to cultivate in ourselves so that our student career can be successful.

How do we go about cultivating these good qualities in ourselves? 

We just train and train and train, right? 

No. 

We help somebody else grow good student qualities, and then ours grow. 

What are these qualities and who does it come from? 

This teaching comes from someone named Arya Deva. Arya Deva is an Indian master from the 17th century? They tell me that's the 1600s. Is that right? I can never remember. In India, he was one of the great teachers of emptiness after Arya Nagarjuna. They often call him Arya Nagarjuna‘s student. But Arya Nagarjuna was 250 AD. Even though they say he lived 500 years, that still doesn't put him into the 1600. 

He's in the lineage of Arya Nagarjuna, this guy Arya Deva. He wrote many things, one of which is called the 400 verses on emptiness, and in that 400 verses, he's talking about these qualities of a student. 

They are:

1. SUR NE = open minded, non-preconceptions of what we are going to learn

2. LO DEN = high intelligence

3. DUN NYER WA = high aspiration

4. NYEN PO NU 

NYEN = a vessel, proper vessel

NYEN PO = a proper vessel to hear the Dharma

1. SUR NE = open minded, non-preconceptions of what we are going to learn

SUR NE is one quality, LO DEN is another and DUN NYER WA is the third. 

They call these the three qualities that make us a proper vessel to hear the Dharma, hear and practice. 

SUR NE, the actual word means the corner stay or the cornerstone. What the cornerstone of our good qualities is this open minded impartiality, non preconceptions of what we're going to learn. 

And I recognize in myself that in my previous career, I was trained in regular Western medicine and then I learned alternative stuff. So I had this different take on how to manage somebody's stuff. And I was required to go to continuing education that was the regular medical, traditional continuing education. And I'd watch my mind as they'd be saying, You do this, this, this and this. And I would be saying, No, you don't. That's only going to make that, that, that mad in the future. But if you do this, this, this and this, you'll get this other result. And I realized that I had this preconceived notion, and I wanted their teachings to match mine. And every now and then it did and it's like, Whoa, they're catching up on.

It was really arrogant of me. I finally recognized it and knock that off, open up, maybe I can learn something if I stop comparing it to what I believe is right. 

So that's this idea as we're learning our Buddhist stuff.

What if we had already grown up as a Buddhist and then we get into this tradition that's pulling away all the cultural aspects, and going for the fine logical details. 

We might have the state of mind that says no, no, that's not what I learned. Whoops. So a good student has this open, non preconceived notion that we know already. Which as non Buddhist learning Buddhism we already have, I don't have preconceived notions, got to know anything about it. 

It's helpful. 

2. LO DEN = high intelligence

LO = mind. 

DEN, I'm not sure what the actual word means, but here it's, they have intelligence. But it intelligence doesn't mean high IQ. It means this ability to think clearly on a difficult subject, concentrating well enough to peel away our beliefs and our misconceptions. So the ability to apply that clear thinking process to what we learn. That's what we mean by intelligence. 

It doesn't take high IQ to do that. It takes determination and concentration to be able to go through the steps, and apply ourselves to the steps. 

But within that intelligence is the intelligence to then make a change in ourselves based on what we've figured out. 

To be intelligent does not mean, I'm this great logician. I can come to this proof of stuff, but I keep yelling at my husband. 

I don't apply it to my own behavior. That's not intelligent. No matter what your IQ is. LO DEN.

3. DUN NYER WA = high aspiration & never to give up

NYER = high

DUN = aspiration. We have this high aspiration, but it's not limited to aspiration. It's aspiration plus determination, plus effort. Roll those all together and you have DUN NYER WA. We aspire to high goals. We're determined to do it. And what was the third one? Effort. We're going to make the effort to do, no matter what. 

Things will get rough, maybe. 

Things will get really good, maybe. 

Of the two, it's a little more dangerous for things to get really nice. Because we'll get complacent. We're thinking, Oh, I'm doing well enough. And then we're not working hard to push it. So, at some level we recognize, Oh my gosh, it's better for me to have trouble than it is to have all this pleasure. 

That's so hard when you're in the midst of it.

You know, my ripenings have almost all to do with my physical body. Things outside of me goes really well, beautifully, easily, fun. But my physical body feels horrible all the time. And I forget. I forget I should be rejoicing in all this ripening crap that doesn't influence anybody else but me. 

Everything outside of me is just fun, and cool, and beautiful. I can just burn this all off all by myself. 

But I forget and I wind myself, self pity me: ‚Is this ever going to go away?‘

Come on, Sarahni. Buck up and burn it off. No big deal. 

The qualities of a proper vessel for the Dharma are three. 

They're impartial, they are intelligent, they aspire to the highest goal and they won't give up. Very Gelugpa.

The list of three, of which there are four. 

So mix those last two together. These two do mix them any way you want, but put all four things down there in the three qualities of a proper vessel for the Dharma. 

And then rejoice like crazy because you have them. 

Because here you are. 

So don't count yourself short. 

You've helped people in extraordinary ways to be radiating a class like this and to be here for it. 

That completes this class. It‘s short. There are a number of short classes in the early ACI. Because what the situation was originally was that Geshe Michael was teaching to a number of students who had already studied with Khen Rinpoche and the Lam Rim. And now Geshe Michael was teaching the monastic training, which was greater detail. But he's teaching to students who had been studying with him under Khen Rinpoche. So you can tell from the audios that from their point of view, they are Geshe Michael’s equal. And so they argue with him. He goes through the review and there are arguing. And he's debating. And they're arguing, and it goes on for half the class. And finally, something shifts and he actually starts the class, and so they're shorter. Which is kind of fun. 

But I didn't consider that all of that discussion to be part of class, although it was for them. Doesn't have to be for us. So sometimes we'll have shorter classes, which means we have time for questions if you have something burning related to this or not. Or we can finish early and i get credit for almost 30 extra minutes which I will need later. So, questions, comments, anything?

[Luisa] I am a bit confused about the difference between method and merit. Because in the quiz of class 2, the question was if just merit will bring you to Buddhahood. And then I was checking the notes of the class, and you were making more the difference between merit and virtue. And then comes method also. So I am a bit confused with this three

[Lama Sarahni] Yeah. Let me see if I can do that. 

When we use the term method, we are speaking to the pair of method side and wisdom side of our practice as a Bodhisattva. 

So our method side is our actions of body, speech and mind in which we are applying ourselves to practicing the first 3 ½ of the perfections. 

To practice giving, we're doing stuff. 

Even if it's just in our mind, we're still doing stuff: giving, moral discipline, not getting angry, having a good time doing all that stuff. 

That's all considered the method side. It's creating good seeds.

The wisdom side is our meditative, contemplation training directed towards increasing intellectual understanding of the marriage between emptiness and dependent origination. 

Reaching wisdom is having the direct perception of emptiness. 

Getting closer to wisdom is getting high intellectual understandings of emptiness, and  then using that growing understanding to imbue our practices of giving, moral discipline, et cetera.. is what makes the deeds of the method side shift from goodness to merit. 

So goodness or virtue means any deed that will bring a pleasant result. 

But it's a pleasant result that we'll wear out. 

[Luisa] I got that, but it was more like when we will do the prayer like the offering, the dedication. It says the complete collection of merit and wisdom, and not the method and wisdom.

[Lama Sarahni] It's not method and wisdom because our method side does not necessarily include the wisdom that makes the method cause for Buddhahood. Our method side creates the goodness to bring us to the direct perception of emptiness, brings us to wisdom. And then our same deeds of method side are now the collection of merit. Our method becomes collection of merit by way of the extent to which we are applying our understanding of the lack of self existence of the three spheres while we're doing the four perfections. The four activity side perfections. 

So when our wishing, giving all our goodness to other beings, collecting the two collections of merit and wisdom, what we're actually saying is: ‚May every being know to grow their kindnesses in these particular ways, and may they see emptiness directly, so that those kindnesses are actually their collection of merit, combined with their collection of wisdom.‘ 

That's what we're dedicating our goodness to. 

That verse is really packed—The dedication prayer. So that's a good question.

Is that more clear? 

[Luisa] I have to relisten, but thank you. Yeah.

[Lama Sarahni] But keep in mind that the student notes, our student notes taken by somebody who was studying, was a kind of a beginner at the time. And although the person whose those student notes are is, I'm sure, much more sophisticated in their understanding now, it was never their task to go back and clean up those student notes. 

So the student notes aren't always accurate. Don't take them as accurate. Even on occasion the answer key isn't exactly accurate either, because it wasn't always written by Geshe Michael either. So when we get those conundrums, do ask them. We'll try and sort them out. But then don't just automatically go: I don't understand, then it must be wrong in the student notes. Don't do that either. 

Assume it's correct. Check it, check it, check it. If it just can't make it make sense, then maybe it's one of those where the students themselves didn't quite understand.

[Rachana] I just have a silly question. You said you had an Olympic coach and I wanted to know what he helped train you in.

[Lama Sarahni] What I had an Olympic coach, Volleyball.

I played on the () team of California Riverside. Even from when I was a freshman, I was heard of from other people. Our team was good. We were second devision team. Small school but we took second in the state. Actually first in the state, second in the nationals. Anyway, our coach was an Olympic player. 

Alright then. You got it? You can do your homework? You can do your quiz? 

[Usual closing]

For the recording, welcome back, we are ACI course 1 class 5. It‘s July 31st 2023.

Let‘s gather our minds here please as we usually do.

[Usual opening]

Let‘s hear the text again. Think about what you know now that you didn‘t know before as we hear it.

I bow to all the high and holy lamas.

As far as I am able I’ll explain

The essence of all high teachings of the Victors,

The path that all their holy sons commend,

The entry point for the fortunate seeking freedom.

Listen with a pure mind, fortunate ones

Who have no craving for the pleasures of life,

And who, to make leisure and fortune meaningful, strive

To turn their minds to the path which pleases the Victors.

There's no way to end without pure renunciation,

This striving for pleasant results in the ocean of life.

It's because of their hankering life as well that beings

Are fettered, so seek renunciation first.

Leisure and fortune are hard to find, life‘s not long;

Think it constantly, stop desire for this life.

Think over and over how deeds and their fruits never fail,

And the cycle is suffering: stop desire for the future.

When you've meditated thus and feel not even

A moment's wish for the good things of cyclic life,

And when you begin to think both night and day

Of achieving freedom, you've found renunciation.

Renunciation though, can never bring

The total bliss of matchless Buddhahood

Unless it’s bound by the purest wish; and so,

The wise seek the high wish for enlightenment.

They’re swept along on four fierce river currents,

Chained up tight in past deeds, hard to undo,

Stuffed in a steel cage of grasping "self",

Smothered in the pitch-black ignorance.

In limitless rounds they're born, and in their births

They are tortured by three sufferings without break;

Think how your mothers feel, think of what's happening

To them: try to develop this highest wish.

You may master renunciation and the wish,

But unless you have the wisdom perceiving reality

You cannot cut the root of cyclic life.

Make efforts in ways then to perceive interdependence.

A person’s entered the path that pleases the Buddhas

When for all objects in the cycle or beyond,

He sees that cause and effect can never fail,

And when for him they lose all solid appearance.

You have yet to realize the thought of the Able

As long as two ideas seem to you disparate:

The appearance of things—infallible interdependence;

And emptiness—beyond taking any position.

At some point they no longer alternate, come together;

Just seeing that interdependence never fails

Brings realization that destroys how you hold to objects,

And then your analysis with view is complete.

In addition, the appearance prevents the existence extreme;

Emptiness that of non-existence, and if

You see how emptiness shows in cause and effect

You'll never be stolen off by extreme views.

When you've grasped as well as I the essential points

Of each of the three principal paths explained,

Then go into isolation, my child, make mighty

Efforts, and quickly win your ultimate wish.

The last two classes we learned about the qualities of a teacher.

That when we devote ourselves to our spiritual path, we have already established somehow that they are reliable.

Then we also talked about the reliability of the teachings. Assess the teachings for reliability: Are they going to do what we want them to do for us?

Then the third factor is assessing ourself as the student. What qualities make a good student. So what qualities do make a good student? 

Just give me one of the 3

[Ale] Open minded. 

[Lama Sarahni] Open minded. We don't have this preconceived idea of what we're trying to learn. We aren't listening to the teachings to just confirm what we already know. We want to learn something new, open ourselves up. 

What's another one? 

[Luisa] Intelligent, but not IQ intelligence. 

[Lama Sarahni] Yeah, what kind of intelligence? 

[Luisa] We do the effort to concentrate and analyze, and then recognize the misunderstanding. And also apply to the teachings 

[Lama Sarahni] The ability to clear think and make a clear decision based on that. Good. And third on,e that actually has two in it?

[Joana]  High aspiration and never giving up. 

[Lama Sarahni] Yeah, good. Nice. All right.

Then as prepared students the teacher starts to show us the principles underneath the principles—the three principles paths—to help us gain the realizations of those three principle paths, we need to learn the details underneath. 

Renunciation & Sansara

So this class is about Sansara and renunciation. The first of the three principal paths is renunciation. We kind of need to know what is it we are cultivating our renunciation of. Renunciation means we're giving up something that we thought was important in favor of something else to renunciate. So what is it we're really renunciating? We kind of need to know if we're gonna cultivate that state of mind. 

Pabongka Rinpoche says, renunciation is the desire to get out of korwa. Korwa is Sansara.

Korwa is the Tibetan word for Sansara. Usually people write it Sansara. But somehow the way the Sanskrit is more accurate to say Sansara. But most people won't know what you're talking about if you write it like this. So we're just going to be Geshe Michael‘s students and use it properly. 

But probably by habit, I'll go back to saying Samsara sometimes, but I'll try. Sansara. Tibetans call it Korwa. Lorwa means to turn, to turn, turn, turn, turn, turn. 

What does it really mean? What is Sansara? Is it a place? It sounds like it when all the teachings say ‚We gotta get out of Sansara‘, we gotta get out of town, right? There's a place and we're trying to get out. But I think we've all already realized that it's not a place to get out of. And yet it's a very real state of being, trapped in this cycle. 

We'll learn more and more details about it as we go on. 

At this point, we get an actual definition of some sort. 

We are Gelukpas. We get definitions and we get lists. 

When your homework asks you for a definition, then please use the specific wording of it, that Geshe Michael gives us. Other questions, when they say explain such and such, or what's the relationship with this and that, you're welcome to explain it in your own words. But for definitions, they need to be precise and Geshela has worked them out. 

Tibetan definition

SAK-CHE NYER-LEN GYI PUNG-POY GYUN YAG-NE YANG-DU

This is what Sansara is, this is what Korwa is. 

What is it?

SAK-CHE NYER-LEN GYI PUNG-POY

PUNG-POY = the heaps, our 5 heaps: Form, feeling, discriminating between things, all the other factors, and our consciousness heaps. 

SAK-CHE PUNG-POY = impure heaps. 

Impure heaps means: Heaps that are the results of causes that were made impurely, meaning ignorantly. As we perceive ourselves thinking, doing, saying towards other, and included in that thinking saying doing is the belief of ‚I'm me in me. They’re them in them. They're doing that to me. I'm doing that to them.‘

All of that is so mistaken that the seeds that are planted with it, when they ripen are called stained. Stained because first of all, we don't know that they are seeds ripening. Second, our response to them is to blame the other, either for the pleasant or the unpleasant, and our reaction is in such a way to think that what I do in this moment brings the result I get next. 

All of that mistake stains the seeds, so that when they ripen, they ripen in ways that are either obvious displeasure, pleasure that wears out, and/or the pervasive suffering of just getting older and dying as we do all our good deeds.

So stained means: stained with ignorance, stained with selfishness. 

Some are more stained than others, of course, because if out of our ignorance and our selfishness we really are nasty to somebody. That seed’s going to be nasty back with this ignorance stain.

But the underlying stain is like chocolate on your white outfit. You can get the big blob out, but you will never get rid of that little shadow of the chocolate blob.

Ignorance is like that, except that we will eventually get rid of the little teeny shadow blob out of our white outfit. Our ignorance will eventually get transformed. 

Impure heaps. 

NYER-LEN GYI = we're forced to take them on

The force here, it doesn't expressly say what forces us, but in that word NYER-LEN, apparently, is the implication forced by karma.

Sansara is this condition of being forced to take on the impure heaps that make up a suffering being. 

GYUN = in a stream

YAG-NE YANG-DU = again and again

YAG-NE YANG-DU, sounds like again and again, YAG-NE YANG-DU, again and again. 

LEN PAN = to take

So, the condition of being forced to take on the impure parts that make up a suffering being over and over again in each life.

Understanding that, to mean we're forced by the ripening of karma for this.

There's not somebody who's making the decision. 

You need to be forced back into a suffering rebirth. Our own karmic seeds are driving that force, as we already know. 

Implies then that we could have pure heaps. 

And it implies that we don't have to be forced into rebirth. 

Which implies that we could go into rebirth in a different way, by choice. 

Not in the sense so much like, Oh, that one. But by way of good karma.

A fully enlightened being still has five heaps, apparently. Only now they're pure. They're free of any suffering. They're called the Five Wisdoms. The Five Buddha Families. 

The purpose of our Buddhist practice is not just to learn how to be calm and mellow while chaos is happening around us, although that will be a side effect of our growing realizations.

The purpose is to stop those horrible things from happening, even to stop the subtle unpleasantness of suffering at all.

The purpose is to create our pure heaps so that we can know exactly how to help others create their pure heaps.

And we reached that place by trying to help others until we reach that place of knowing exactly how to help.

So liberation means to be reborn with pure heaps. That's all what Geshela said at this early class. There's more to it than that. 

Renunciation then means wanting to get free of this Sansaric condition of reacting to the situation mistakenly, that replants the seeds for the mistake, that ripen as our ongoing impure heaps. 

So it's not really: I'm trying to get away from planet Earth before it cooks. I'm not trying to get out of this life before it ends.

It's: I'm trying to change my perception of everything in a swift enough time frame before I lose the seeds to be interested in doing it.

It's difficult to get renunciation until we really understand that every part of our suffering world is suffering: the obvious sufferings—pretty clear.

But the suffering of change, leaving us wanting for more when pleasant things wear out. Thinking that what we did to get rid of the unpleasant thing actually worked when the unpleasant thing stops. 

And then pervasive suffering, which is that underlying condition of our seeds for this life are wearing out from the instant it comes into being. So no matter how many vitamins we take, how many headstands we do, the underlying aging, illness, death thing is happening because it's within the seeds that were planted before.

It doesn't mean not to take care of our body. But as we well know, nothing works for everybody. Except helping other people take care of other people take care of other people. I can't stop saying, we could say I'm going to help somebody else go to yoga and that will do it. But really, it's not quite enough because that person will be left thinking yoga will work for them. And maybe it will, maybe it won't. So we would try to take it the next step: I'll take you to yoga class if you'll take somebody else.

And then that person has to take somebody else. And that person has to take somebody else. Veronica‘s yoga classes would be overflowing, wouldn't they? Because everybody's bringing somebody. And that's what makes yoga work.

Which is why yoga teachers are so amazing because they're helping everybody else. 

The results planted by our deeds done in response to past suffering are the causes of our current suffering, and our ignorant response to our current suffering creates the causes for our future suffering. And all of that perpetuates Sansara, our impure 5 heaps. 

That is Sansara, our impure 5 heaps.

So what keeps us circling in that cycle, especially once we hear about it? 

Why can't we hear about it and go, Whoa, this is just stupid, I'm going to quit.

Some people can. If we have the seeds for that.

(We're having a really big storm blow through. If we lose power, so sorry.)

What keeps us in Sansara?

LE-NYUN GYI CHING = Karma and mental afflictions, chained by.

GYI-CHING = chaines.

So what keeps us in Sansara is that we are chained to it by way of our karma and mental afflictions. So LE is the Tibetan word for karma. 

Karma is the Sanskrit word for this process of cause and effect. 

Curiously, there is a Tibetan word pronounced karma, but it means ‚star‘, like the star in the sky, or the star on your Christmas tree. So it can get a little bit confusing when we see a Tibetan use the term karma, we think, Oh, they're talking about cause and effect, but they're talking about stars. LE is karma.

Then what is karma? 

We learned from Abhidharma Kosha. Karma is movement and the mind and what it motivates. Don't we expect the answer to be, Oh, it's the law of cause and effect? 

That's not what karma is.

Karma is movement of the mind and what it motivates. 

Meaning: Our attention shifts from one thing to a next, and we think, do, say in response, Which is another movement of the mind, right? 

So our minds are moving constantly, Karma is happening all the time. 

The experience is the ripening result. And how we respond is the planting, becomes the cause.

That process we call karma. Which is movement of the mind and what it motivates. So what keeps us chained to Sansare is movement of the mind and what it motivates—LE—and the mental afflictions. The term is (NYO MONG)—here they shorten it NYEN. Karma and mental afflictions. 

KLESHA is the term in Sanskrit. A klesha, a mental affliction, we could call them emotions in the West, our emotions. 

We'll learn the definition of a mental affliction is any thought that disturbs our peace of mind. The obvious ones are pretty clear:

We get angry.

We get frustrated.

We get short tempered.

We get jealous.

We get so tired that we snap at somebody. 

The more subtle ones are that niggling irritation, that things aren't going my way. 

The, I want… this pleasure isn't enough pleasure. I deserve more.

These little niggles. 

And underneath that is the mental affliction of our belief of me in me, and you in you and.

All of that disturbs our peace of mind. 

I can't even conceive of what a non mentally afflicted state of mind would be like. What is a peaceful state of mind? 

And why is it so hard to find? At least for me, maybe not for you guys. 

So mental afflictions is anytime we're not just peaceful. 

It's because we misunderstand, and because of that misunderstanding, we are so sure that we need to act and react the way we've been worldly taught is appropriate in response to what we're experiencing. And we believe that the response that we do now brings what comes next.

We really believe that when you turn the knob and pull the door open, turning the knob has opened the door. Well, you're not going to open the door without turning the knob. But that's not what really opens the door, right? 

We're believing that what we do creates what comes next. And that perpetuates these mental afflictions. Because it's so mistaken.

But the ramification of that is not to just do nothing. Which we might think.

It's about how do I learn to overcome the mistake and respond in ways that will chip away at it so that I can respond to things in my world—all the while aware that my response won't bring me its result until later. And to be able to live in that space of ‚What planting for future in response to every moment of now?‘

It's hard to even conceive.

Our misunderstanding makes us react with more impure thoughts and mental afflictions that perpetuate the cycle. 

So what we're trying to get out of is being trapped inside that misunderstood cycle. Renunciation, then, is finally recognizing how trapped we are in our own circle, our own cycle, trapped in our own misunderstanding and how difficult it is to break this cycle. But thankfully, not impossible.

Then, once we see that clearly for ourselves, it's only natural for many, for some, to turn that on to those around us. First to those we love. 

Wow, I see how I'm trapped. They look human to me. They must be trapped in the same way. I know I don't really know for sure, but it looks like it. 

Then that grows to people who aren't close to us so much, but we interact with frequently. 

Then it grows to neutral people.

Then it grows to people we really don't like.

So that we don't need any out. Not just meaning human people, but any aware being. And that state of mind where we are seeing another in need of food, or clothing, or a new job, or something, and we want to help them get that, and we realize that that's just gonna be a temporary fix that perpetuates their Sansara.

So yes, we help them in that way. But with this higher intention of being able to be able to help them learn to stop their suffering forever someday. 

That state of mind is Bodhichitta. It's the glimmer of Bodhichitta.

I understand this process well enough to see that it is possible for me to stop my suffering. 

Then it's just unacceptable to do it for myself, alone when everybody's in the same boat or worse. Because maybe they've not even met the Dharma yet.

Renunciation turned on to others is the start of our Bodhichitta. 

Which means we need our own renunciation first.

But it doesn't mean until you feel like you have renunciation as a realization, you don't grow your Bodhichitta. We can.

But we could think it's noble, I will focus on Bodhichitta, wanting to help everyone and just forget my own me. It won't hold water that way.

We need to be really clear that our own ignorance is really the source of all that suffering that we see.

So we really need to take firm hold of fixing our own ignorance, and being able to do so in a powerful way by way of trying to help others recognizing clear theirs.

How do we begin to stop this cycle? 

The Lamas will teach us that there are two meditations, contemplations that we use.

The first one is DEL NJOR NYE-KA.

When we have that one clear, they move us to CHI-WA MI-TAK-PA. 

DEL NJOR is the word for leisures and fortunes.

There are 8 leisures and 10 fortunes, we will learn them in detail in future classes. NYE-KA means difficult to find.

The verse says:

That leisures and fortunes are difficult to find.

This life is not long.

Think it constantly.

[Class ends due to connection loss]

For the recording, welcome back. We are  ACI course 1 class 5 1/2 and 6 on August 3rd, 2023. 

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

[Usual opening]

So again, let's listen to our text, recalling what you're understanding about it more than when we first started.

I bow to all the high and holy lamas.

As far as I am able I’ll explain

The essence of all high teachings of the Victors,

The path that all their holy sons commend,

The entry point for the fortunate seeking freedom.

Listen with a pure mind, fortunate ones

Who have no craving for the pleasures of life,

And who, to make leisure and fortune meaningful, strive

To turn their minds to the path which pleases the Victors.

There's no way to end without pure renunciation,

This striving for pleasant results in the ocean of life.

It's because of their hankering life as well that beings

Are fettered, so seek renunciation first.

Leisure and fortune are hard to find, life‘s not long;

Think it constantly, stop desire for this life.

Think over and over how deeds and their fruits never fail,

And the cycle is suffering: stop desire for the future.

When you've meditated thus and feel not even

A moment's wish for the good things of cyclic life,

And when you begin to think both night and day

Of achieving freedom, you've found renunciation.

Renunciation though, can never bring

The total bliss of matchless Buddhahood

Unless it’s bound by the purest wish; and so,

The wise seek the high wish for enlightenment.

They’re swept along on four fierce river currents,

Chained up tight in past deeds, hard to undo,

Stuffed in a steel cage of grasping "self",

Smothered in the pitch-black ignorance.

In limitless rounds they're born, and in their births

They are tortured by three sufferings without break;

Think how your mothers feel, think of what's happening

To them: try to develop this highest wish.

You may master renunciation and the wish,

But unless you have the wisdom perceiving reality

You cannot cut the root of cyclic life.

Make efforts in ways then to perceive interdependence.

A person’s entered the path that pleases the Buddhas

When for all objects in the cycle or beyond,

He sees that cause and effect can never fail,

And when for him they lose all solid appearance.

You have yet to realize the thought of the Able

As long as two ideas seem to you disparate:

The appearance of things—infallible interdependence;

And emptiness—beyond taking any position.

At some point they no longer alternate, come together;

Just seeing that interdependence never fails

Brings realization that destroys how you hold to objects,

And then your analysis with view is complete.

In addition, the appearance prevents the existence extreme;

Emptiness that of non-existence, and if

You see how emptiness shows in cause and effect

You'll never be stolen off by extreme views.

When you've grasped as well as I the essential points

Of each of the three principal paths explained,

Then go into isolation, my child, make mighty

Efforts, and quickly win your ultimate wish.

Last class, before Mother Nature cut us off, we had been talking about renunciation and karma. We had just gotten to this section of how do we begin to stop the cycle. We learned that definition of Korwa of Sansara. 

It was on your homework and you didn't do your quiz yet, so I'm not allowed to ask you, but it was:

The condition of being forced to take on by the power of karmic results being forced to take on those impure heaps that make up a suffering being over and over again, through our various lives

When we wanna know: My renunciation is growing. I'm understanding more and more that nothing ever works out right. And even when it seems to, it comes to an end. It's frustrating because I think I can do the same thing again and again and I get the same result. Then it doesn't work and it leaves me like stranded. 

Then at any moment good things are happening and all of a sudden it all shifts and some disaster happens or even many disaster, and it's so out of our control. Like, how is it at all possible that we can change from this being forced into rebirth over and over again, so being forced and even having to rebirth at all. 

Although it's kind of hard to conceive of what that alternative is. 

How do we start to stop the cycle?

The Lam Rim gives us these two beginning practices, early practices.

The first one is called DEL NJOR NYE-KA.

DEL NJOR NYE-KA =leisure and fortune are hard to find

DEL = leisure

NJOR = fortunes

NYE-KA = they're hard to find

The difficulty in finding the leisures and fortunes that we already have. So we'll go into the detail of what are those 8 leisures and 10 fortunes in future classes. 

But the basis of it is:

• We are human. 

• We are intelligent. 

• We have our faculties intact. 

• We have sufficient abundance that we can spend time studying and practicing the Dharma. We're not in survivor mode all the time.

• We have met the Dharma. 

• We're interested in it.

All these different categories of opportunities and resources that we have, that we kind of take for granted. And when we look to see: Do other people have that?

Apparently, not many. 

And when we even then look at our own, having those resources and opportunities, we recognize that we just assume that they're going to go on as long as we need them. But we don't know that for sure, of course. 

So it's actually quite rare to be in the positions that we are in and this early teaching is designed to help us like appreciate that in the sense of motivating us to learn what we need to learn and do what we need to do to stay in those leisures and fortunes, to use them to our greatest advantage. It's what the lamas want us to do.

Geshela said: Here we are, like this really formal didactic learning of the principles of how we become a fully enlightened being. And just to look at other humans out of the 8 billion that there are, I don't know, Ale, you tell us how many people are studying the Dharma at this level? And if we go by ACI and say, Wow, there's like 2000 people, maybe there's even 5000 that have taken all the ACI courses. Maybe we do that to the 10th exponential so there's 50,000 people that have studied the Dharma in an intense high level. And let's just for fun, double that, 100,000 people out of 8 billion. A blip.

And here we are. One of these little bitty drops in this blip of people serious about their Dharma path in this particular tradition. And then we compare that to all the conscious beings there are. Just the realm we know: Animals, bugs, fish. 

Now we're even more special. 

Then expand that to those other realms that we don't really even maybe believe in yet, and we're even more special. 

We're supposed to think of it as: Wow, this is an incredibly rare opportunity, it looks like. If just going by those numbers is a valid conclusion to say, Oh my goodness, how did I do that? You don't have to answer that question. You did it.

Whatever you did, you did. Hooray for that. And we we want to recognize that it's a rare and special opportunity to motivate us to take advantage of it. 

Not to say, Oh, I don't really deserve it. I'm not that good, and then let those seeds grow and lose the interest. 

It's designed to go Wow. Maybe then I am kind of special. Maybe I do have the ability to make some big old changes here. 

Then, like hot on the heels of pumping us up, the lama says: You've got this great opportunity and guess what? 

CHI-WA MI-TAK-PA = death is certain

It's like the death awareness factor, become aware of your impermanence. 

You are so rare and special and you could die 4 minutes from now.

It‘s designed to motivate us, not depress us. 

That whole practice of learning the death awareness is so exquisite. 

It leads us through all the different ways to analyze our own belief about what it means to be in permanent. And although we all know we're gonna die, it's like sometime long from now. We don't live each day with the amazing wow factor. I didn't die yesterday. And so I have today. I might die tonight, in fact, I probably will. 

So is what I'm doing now what I would want to be doing if this is my last day? 

The idea, again, is to motivate us in our training, and using what we learn in our training in order to try to use our circumstances to their greatest advantage. Just in case they're ending tonight. 

Then, if you wake up tomorrow. Wow, I have another day! 

And it's just another day, and another day, and another day.

It's really hard to live by that. But these two made real for us—how fortunate we are and how we could lose it at any moment—is what builds the momentum of our willingness and ability to make the changes in our behavior that we need to make to bring this cycle of Sansara to an end, to stop perpetuating it. 

We don't want to lose the forest for the trees, right? 

We want to keep our big picture in mind, and then each of these steps is moving us along to that behavior that will create the causes for the results that we are aspiring to achieve.

Why is it so difficult to really change our behavior?

There's a lot of reasons for that difficulty.

One of the methods that they teach us to address this difficulty is the subject matter called:

JIK-TEN CHU-GYE - the 8 worldly thougts

GYE = eight

CHU = thoughts. Well, that's not a thoughts, Dharma

JIK-TEN = worldly, our destructible world. 

These eight worldly thoughts, it‘s about our automatic reaction to certain circumstances that have in it our expectation and our choice of behavior. Which is mostly automatic, so we could hardly call it a choice, but we see this pattern: 

This happens >> I feel this >> I believe that I react like that.

But it happens like Domino's, right? 

To learn about the 8 worldly thoughts gives us this ability or this opportunity to start watching for those eight situations, and how our response to them, our reactions to them are so automatic. Because those automatic-isms are mistaken. But we can't really fix them until we recognize we're doing them.

JIK-TEN CHU-GYE —these are four pairs that makes the 8:

1 and 2) NYE DANG MA NYE

3 and 4) DE DANG MI-DE

5 and 6) NYEN DANG MI-NYEN

7 and 8) TU-ME 

NYE DANG MA NYE. The words actually are: get what I want, don't get what I want. But the whole worldly thought is to be happy when I get what I want. And to be unhappy when I don't, or when I get what I don't want.

So although these are pairs there is kind of three things involved here. 

Being happy when I get what I want, being unhappy when I don't, and unhappy when I get what I don't want. 

DE DANG MI-DE means being happy when I feel good. And being unhappy when I don't feel good. 

NYEN DANG MI-NYEN. NYEN in here means fame. But not in the sense of your name on billboards and across the bus, but well thought of. Well, thought of, well liked, that kind of fame. So to be happy when we're well thought of, well liked. And to be unhappy when we're not. The word is fame, but it doesn't quite translate. 

TU-ME means being praised and ME means not praised. So to be happy when we get praised. And to be unhappy when we don't get praised, and of course to be unhappy when we get criticized, which is the opposite of praise is to get criticized.

To not get praised when we think we should, we get upset.

But worse, we get upset when we get criticized, right?

So the basis of all of these is that our belief is, that the getting what we want is the source of that being happy. Don't we? Why do I want the thing if I don't think it's going to make me happy? That's like the definition of ‚I want it‘. 

Then we get it. I want a raspberry popsicle. I go down and I buy one and I have it, and yes, it's pleasurable and so I'm happy that I got it.

And I believe that the happiness is coming from getting it. 

Because the pleasure is coming from it. 

Can I have the pleasure of eating a raspberry popsicle if I don't have a raspberry popsicle? 

Yeah, technically you can. But it's different to remember the pleasure of previous raspberry popsicle and actually have one right, tasting that flavor right now. 

The raspberry popsicle, there's nothing wrong with it. There is nothing wrong with wanting it. 

What the mistake is, is believing that getting it makes me happy. 

But it's like: But it does make me happy!

But it's not the real cause of that happiness. Because what I did to get the raspberry popsicle is not really what brought it to me. 

I walked to the dollar store with my dollar or two and bought the popsicle. But that's not the real cause of it. We're going to learn.

You guys all know the punchline, but if we didn't know the punch line, what I'm saying would be like, What is she talking about?

Those 8 worldly thoughts, it sounds like: Give up those eight worldly thoughts and just don't care whether you get what you want or don't get what you want. 

Don't care whether you feel good or don't feel good. 

That's not the point. 

Buddha does not want to make us into robots that don't care, that don't react, that don't respond, that don't have likes and dislikes.

It's the mistaken belief system he is wanting us to recognize. It‘s difficult to recognize until we recognize this sequence: I get happy when I get what I want and I get unhappy when I don't. 

There's something wrong with this picture. 

We could be happy whether we get what we want, or don't get what we want, or get what we don't want.

Our state of mind could be independent of what's going on. 

So there are these apparent 4 different circumstances that we must experience often: 

• Getting what we want or not,

• Feeling good or not,

• Being well known, well liked or not and

• Being praised or criticized. 

In our meditation we were supposed to explore these and see how they're related to growing our renunciation. The exploration will help us recognize that sometimes I get what I wanted, and I don't get happy. 

And sometimes, crazy as it seems, I get something I didn't want, and son of a gun I get happy from it. 

And if that's possible, then being happy from getting what I want, can't be the real cause and effect relationship. So we'll come to recognize our expectation, and begin to wonder: Does it have to be like that? 

Does it have to be that being criticized is unpleasant? It could be delivered so smoothly that you don't even recognize you were just criticized, couldn't it?

And we wouldn't have our feelings hurt at all, it would sound like assistance and support. Or we could hear words that are actually meant to be praised, but the way they're delivered, we interpret them as, Well, that's a passive aggressive way to criticize me. And they didn't mean it that way at all.

If we explore our own experiences, we‘ll show ourselves how our habit of these eight worldly thoughts are just habit, and they can be different. 

That's the point: To help us recognize that we can behave differently in situations of life with the intention of having an impact on this cycle of Sansara—being forced by the power of Karmas to have to retake the impure heaps over and over again. We're wanting to stop that cycle. 

It does not mean, I already said that, it does not mean to not enjoy. And it does not mean to do what we can to avoid bad things. It means recognizing, is the cause and effect relationship that I believe that's going on really the one that's happening here. 

When we get something nice, we can recall, Well, this is the result of some kindness I did in the past. Thanks, Josephine, or whoever you were back then. Oh man, this is uncomfortable. This is unpleasant. Great, I'm burning it off. How can I respond so I don't replant it?

Just to be aware of the reaction before we act is what we're trying to grow. 

OK, that completes class 5. Now you can do your homework and your quiz. 

Official start class 6

Your reading use the analogy of how renunciation is the medicine for the sickness of having desire for this life. Thinking that we can reach some kind of ultimate happiness in this worldly cycle.

Now we are using this life to reach ultimate happiness for everybody. But we're not using the same old habit patterns to do that. We are using the fact that we have created this Sansara to uncreate it. 

When we talk about desire for this life, we mean ignorant desire. We mean this belief that there's something I can do in a worldly way that will bring me to that highest worldly happiness that I want and that will keep it. I will keep it.

No worldly cause and effect relationship can bring that. 

It takes a wisdom relationship with something to make that result. And then it's not a worldly result. So those two Lam Rims—becoming aware of our leisures and fortunes, how fortunate we are, and becoming aware that we could lose that at any moment, either by dying or by getting disabled, or by just something happening—and our beliefs just shift. 

And it's like: What am I doing now?

As we investigate that, they say that naturally, our sense of wanting to reprioritize our life and our behavior will dawn upon us. It may even seem like the teachings are saying: Just give everything up. Go live under a bridge and do nothing but meditate, and pray, and pick up garbage, and you'll reach ultimate happiness. Yet, as we study and work with these principles, we're seeing our renunciation isn't really against the things that we have or the circumstances that we have. Our renunciation will go deeper to being directed towards our misunderstanding of how the world works and our selfishness that's driven by that. 

That level of renunciation, does it require living under a bridge? In fact, probably becomes more effective in driving our progress by staying within our worldly life and using our work as the Dharma laboratory, our families as the Dharma laboratory, our struggles and funs as the Dharma laboratory—where we grow our renunciation of the wrong point of view, the wrong understanding where happiness comes from.

Geshela gave the analogy of someone were to say to you: Sometime in the next 30 days I'm going to come break into your house and destroy you and everything. 

Would you wait until the 29th day before you lock your doors and windows? Or would you run right home and do it right that same day? 

Just in case tomorrow is the day they're going to show up. So it's this idea, to understand our leisures and fortunes, that we have already created and they are ripening, and the fact that we could lose them at any moment, we would want you start preparing now. Not waiting until things are already shifting.

Start preparing now means: Learning what behaviors, what habits we want to change, and what we want to change them to.

That requires learning more and more clearly about how it is that our behaviors are what create the causes for our future experiences. Because that's not readily obvious. That's what's meant by karma. 

The term karma is commonly thought of as the law of cause and effect. Sometimes it's thought of as fate. Sometimes it's thought of as duty. You don't mess with your fate. You don't mess with your duty. You stay within the boundaries that you've been given. 

But when we learn about what we mean by karma, which is movement of the mind and what it motivates, we are talking about the real cause effect relationship that creates our reality. Not the worldly cause effect relationships. 

We're making those. The fact that an acorn is necessary to make an oak tree is our karma. We make it that way.

How we make karma? We want to know more and more clearly. How do we do that? We know the punchline already: What we see ourselves think, say and do towards other makes an imprint on our consciousness that then streams along, growing until it ripens into its result. And that result is our in that moment experience to which we react. And reaction, when it's complete, has replanted a whole slew of new imprints. While those are being imprinted and carrying on, a whole slew of other ones are ripening. And that's me and my life. 

Ripening>>My experience>>Plantings>>How I respond to those experiences.

That's how Sansara is perpetuated. And it's Sansara because we don't understand that that's how it's perpetuated. We don't understand that it's through the power of my behavior that I create the imprints on my mind that are the source of my experiences—just not in the moment experiences.

It takes time for those imprints to grow strong enough to get over the threshold, whatever that is, into manifestation. But it's a very smooth system. It's not like there is a moment where there's a pause in between. Planting, ripening, planting, ripening, planting, ripening. 

We learned that where my power to change things lies is in my interaction with others. And we're driven by our habit of how to interact with others in certain circumstances.

Somebody's nasty. We're supposed to be nasty back.

They expect us to be nasty back. 

And when we're not nasty back, they think there's something wrong with us. Oftentimes. 

But when we understand that the nastiness was forced by my own seeds ripening, I'm not about to be nasty back if I don't like them being nasty to me.

Our power is in not responding in the old, ignorant, selfish ways. 

Try something new. It may not be exactly the thing you wanted to actually plant, but it's better than being on automatic pilot. 

We learned the four principles of the way this system works. 

The Four Principles of karma - introduction

They come to be called the Four Laws of karma. And we hear that term and we think, OK somebody determined karma will work like this.

But that's not an accurate understanding.

Those four principles of karma are explanations for how and why our existence is what it is for each of us. 

It's the explanation. 

And with those four factors, the explanation is complete. 

In order for learning the four principles of karma, to be a cotton dried reasoning, we need to understand about past and future lives. 

In the olden days I‘d think, the older cultures than my modern one did seem to know about past and future lifetimes. Then something happened to these once they call modern and they started to lose that belief, and developed this belief that you have this one life. And when at the end of this life, after a period of time, you have that judgment day and then you either go up or go down and then it‘s that forever.

Or the thinking was by some amazing turn of coincidence that I'm here with this physical body and when this body dies, I'm just gone. Like completely identified with the physical world—which I once was. So I understand that.

And all the rest of that just didn't make any sense because you couldn't see it, hear it, smell it, taste it, touch it like you can this one.

Because these imprints-in-and-imprints-out takes time for a given imprint to bring about its result, we cannot prove the four laws of Karma accurately without having the component of ‚This can take more than one lifetime to ripen‘.

To understand the Four laws accurately, we need this bigger length of time.

To be able to prove that our mindstream is infinite—Geshela says it's not really particularly difficult and he just did it. Then we'll do it again in future classes.

He said: Look, consider right now you are aware, right?

It's about the only thing we really know for sure, is the light bulb’s on. I'm aware of something. That awareness is a result of a cause. The cause has to be similar to the result, and the cause has to have been made before the result. 

So, this moment of awareness has to have come from a previous moment of awareness.

I don't know if it's this instant to that instant to that instant… 

They imply that that is, but that doesn't make sense to me.

But regardless, to have this one, there had to have been one before.

Now track that back to the first moment of this life.

Whether you believe it's when the baby takes its first breath, or when the egg and the sperm meat or anywhere in between there, the first instant of awareness of this life, that's a result, is it not?

It has to have a cause that came before. So, the first moment of awareness in this life had to have a moment of awareness before that. Then that one had to have moments of awareness before that, and before that, and before that. 

It goes on endlessly, you could say backwards into the past. This mindstream, the one that you have, the one that I have, has been a mindstream since beginningless time. Unique. Unique. 

I can't say it's been Sarahnis's mindstream, right?

But it's the one that is here now. 

Now let's do the same thing going forward.

We could say OK, just because it's been since beginningless time, that doesn't mean it can't end in an instant.

They use a little different tact here, they say, Well, actually we already believe that our mind stream goes on and that it accumulates things as it experiences things.

We say why? And they say, Because you go to school.

We go to school, as kids, they make us go to school. But they make us go to school because they know that we're going to learn some stuff that we will use when we're grown-ups to be able to be more functioning members of our society. 

If we didn't believe that the mindstream went Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing, then we would have no reason to believe that putting the alphabet in my mind when I was five years old would still be a usable alphabet when I'm almost 70.

But we do believe it, which is why we learn and it works, right?

I can balance the checkbook because I learned arithmetic and division and cool stuff like that a long time ago.

So we do believe that our behaviors affect, right? They stay in our mind so we must believe our mind goes on. And if our mind goes on, then—and we know that these physical bodies die—do we have any proof that the mind stops when the body stops, if the mind is this clear, inaffable, non tangible thing?

We can see the physical body stops breathing, stops heart beating, stop circulation. But we can't see the mind has stopped. 

If we think brain function is mind function, we say, No, no, the mind has stopped. 

But how can brain function, which is material stuff, even the chemical stuff happening in it, be the real mind? 

Yes, it influences. Yes, it has cause and effect. But our brain can't be our mind.

Our mind, our awareness. We all have it. We all know it.

There's no proof that it ends. And there's much anecdotal proof that it goes on by way of people that have had near death experience, or had spontaneous past life recalls. None of it is really hard and fast proof. But we can do the kind of proof where nothing else makes sense, right? Which isn't really logic, but it holds until we reach the point where we see it directly, which is perceiving emptiness directly. Part of that process is now knowing what's meant by mainstream.

I'm going to say we believe in a mindstream, and that that mindstream carries on regardless of what kind of physical manifestation it's making at any given time.

It's continuing, changing, changing, changing. 

Never the same two moments in a row, but never not existent.

We've heard that before because we've already studied this. 

And so now we have this more clear understanding of why it is that our actions towards others are the important factor in stopping Sansara.

That's where we started: How do we stop perpetuating the cycle?

We need to understand that that cycle happens over multiple lifetimes, not just one. And then we want to understand what drives it.

So let's take a break and we'll go into the four laws of karma.

[break]

[Liansang] Can new consciousnesses be created?

[Lama Sarahni] I've heard Geshela say that the scriptures say there is a finite number of mindstreams. So that would imply we can't make new. Then, you know, I used to study theosophy, I think you know that and that literature goes into the evolution of different kingdoms of existence. And the human kingdom is just one of many. And somewhere in there they even posit that the mineral kingdom is on a path of spiritual evolution and that a stone that can be made into a beautiful emerald ring has a higher, has a better karma, a higher…they don't call it consciousness, but, than a piece of granite that can be made into a kitchen counter. And they say that by being a beautiful piece of jewelry and bringing pleasure to people, that gem can evolve and that it reaches the highest evolution of the mineral kingdom, and then gets into the next kingdom that's up higher than it, whatever that is. And that implies that there are things that don't have consciousness that will eventually get to where they do have consciousness. And I don't know, we could take that to the debate ground and see what we would figure out. Because we always have that... 

[Liansang] Of course we want to know where did we come from? Where did that consciousness come from?

[Lama Sarahni] Yeah. It's hard not to have that, what was the first one? But you see, that's born of those two side channels and the self-existent me, self existent other think. When we really get rid of that, that question, where is the first one, will just not ever occur to us anymore. You know, it'll just be absurd to say it. I don't see it that way yet, but I can't conceive of it, it's like a first thing. That's crazy. 

[end of break]

What's Karma? 

LE, movement of the mind and what it motivates meaning:

Our awareness shifts and we think, do, say something.

So when we use the term ‘mind’ here, we're using it in terms of this awareness shifting, shifting, shifting. 

We're not talking about intellect. We're not talking about the mental thoughts. 

It's more subtle than that. It's the awareness that's underneath all of that mind. 

So mind moves and then think, say, do, in some order. But just the movement of the mind, that's karma ripening, planting, happening constantly.

A good karma is said to be any action of body, speech or mind that brings about a pleasant result in the short term. 

A bad karma is any action of body, speech, mind that brings us an unpleasant result. 

A neutral karma is anything that brings about something other than those two, which I don't quite understand that. 

But the thing is, we'll see that what we think is the karmic cause and effect relationship isn't really it. Because as we learn how it works, what we've finished doing now is not the actual cause for what happens in the next moment.

So if there's time between when I do my deed and when it comes back to me as pleasant or unpleasant, I can't actually connect the dot. 

It's really hard to figure out, is the deed I'm doing now a good karma or a bad karma? Because I don't know how it's gonna come back to me. 

When we learn about the laws of karma and how they work we can get a good idea about how it works, so that we can use logic to figure out that if I am aware of myself doing something to someone that they seem to like, then that means I'm going to in the future get a result of some kind that I seem to like.

We would only know whether the karma done was a good one or a bad one by knowing what the result is.

But we use that to make our choice about what behavior to do based on saying, Well, if somebody were doing this to me, would I like it or not?

Because by doing it to someone else, something similar is going to come back, only bigger, or more. 

So we can still use these ideas, these principles, to make healthier choices. Even though the actual thing causing that result is called deeply hidden reality. It takes Arhat level, or maybe more to see it. To see it directly takes Buddha. 

The four laws of Karma

1. LE NGE-PA = Karma is definite (like makes like)

2. LE PEL CHE-WA = karma increase bigger

3. LE MA-JE-PA DANG MI-TRE-PA = a karma not done

4. LE JE-PA CHU MI-SA-WA = karma done don‘t just disappear

So these four principles are explaining why virtuous behavior, kindness behavior is necessary if we want any kind of pleasantness, worldly or otherwise, in our future.

1. LE NGE-PA = karma is definite

Sounds to me like it says: Karma's true.

It always happens. Don't argue with it.

But that's not what ‚karma is definite‘ means. 

It means it is definite that a kind deed will bring a pleasant result. 

It is definite that an unkind deed will bring an unpleasant result.

So if we are experiencing something unpleasant, it has to be because of some kind of unkindness that we did in the past. 

If we're experiencing a pleasant result, it has to be from some kind of kindness.

No matter how it appears.

So years ago, when I was in college, I'd go home one week in a month and I'd clean my mother's kitchen for her. 

And she liked it, you know, It wasn't particularly dirty, but it was something she didn't care to do so much. So I just did it for her and it pleased her. 

So one time, David and I went to visit his parents. And his mum was away, and I cleaned her kitchen for her. And she came back and was so insulted, and was so upset with me and I don't think we ever really fixed that relationship. 

I was so astounded. Because it's like I never in a moment dreamed that it wouldn't please her, because that had already always been my experience: you help somebody like that and they like it. 

So the same deed gave different results.

It wasn't the deed that gave the result, was it? No. 

Somebody will come clean my kitchen for me. They already have. But, whether I'm happy with that or not happy with that, that'll be partly their karma, partly my karma.

But do you see it can't be the cleaning the kitchen that was the cause for my mother being pleased with me, or my mother-in-law to be being not pleased with me? 

Because you can't get a different result from the same cause. 

It's not the cause if it brings a different result. Do you see? 

So karma is definite in the sense that a kindness will bring unpleasant result, and unkindness will bring an unpleasant result, even though it doesn't appear to be that way. Because we're not connecting the dot, right? 

2. LE PEL CHE-WA. LE = karma increase bigger

It seems redundant. But it means it grows and continues growing. Not just one seed becomes double. But it doubles, and doubles, and doubles, and doubles, they say.

I don't know if it actually doubles or how it grows, but the point is it's continuing to grow bigger and more of them. But I haven't quite figured out why they become more of them. Bigger makes sense to me, but more I don't quite understand. 

But they say bigger and more.

In Worldly cause-effect, the teeny little acorn makes this humongous tree. And that's great if it grows where you want a humongous tree. But it's not so great if that humongous tree—which grew from a tiny little acorn—is in a place that is dangerous or you don't want it, or whatever.

So the acorn can't both bring an oak tree that's in the right place, and an oak tree that's in the wrong place. That has to be coming from the one who's having the judgment. It's good oak tree or bad oak tree? 

Same oak tree from a tiny little seed. And that oak tree is gonna make bazillion acorns with the potential of bazillion trees.

But not all those acorns make trees, right? We would be inundated with oak trees.

So if we don't want an oak tree in that particular location, we don't dare let a little acorn sit there and sprout. And if it already has, and it's this big, we're gonna pull it out while it's little.

A friend of mine in this neighborhood has this oak tree, which is unusual in Tucson, and there were 100 little babies that were about this big last fall, spring, summer, sometime. I called the Sky Harvest team, You guys want these baby oak trees?

They came all the way there. We spent all day digging up these little baby oak trees, and they're only this big, but their roots went like this far down.

(Showing with her hands small size of the sprout and bigger size of the roots)

And so we always inevitably broke the taproot, and I don't know that any of them survived. It was frustrating.

The point is: if we get them when they're tiny, we can prevent a whole lot of other stuff. Because they grow up and when they get big, they're a problem, and when they're little, they're not such a problem.

Same with our karmic seeds. A deed done when, we finish the seed’s in there. It's staying—hard to describe. And it's being influenced by new ones coming in. Ones that are similar to it, add to it. Ones that are opposite of it, detract from it. 

And within all of those seeds—similar and dissimilar—is the belief in the identity and qualities of it, in it, from it. 

So that there's a common piece in every seed of an ignorant being, which is our ignorance. And that's feeding all the seeds.

So, kindness adds to kindness.

Unkindness takes away from kindness.

But ignorance keeps building.

They're all growing.

Once they ripen that set of seeds—for however long it takes for that experience to ripen—they are done. They're gone.

But by the time they're done and gone, we've already planted a whole slew of new ones in response to that experience. So each experience is results, ripening results. Our response, reactions, responses to those experiences are planting the new seeds. 

Those who've slowed their minds down enough to really look, say that we make 65 imprints per instant. Shorter than a second, really. And we ripen 65 per instance. But when these planted and when they ripen, they've grown. So we will never run out of karmic seeds. Which is the real explanation for beginningless and endless mindstream. 

Movement of the mind and what it motivates. 

So karma is definite, karma grows.

3. LE MA-JE-PA DANG MI-TRE-PA = a karma not done

MI-TRE-PA means does not make contact, not touch. 

What is this saying that a deed not done cannot bring about a result. And we go duh. But we don't live by that Duh. Because we complain when we're not getting what we want. We complain when they don't do that the way they should. 

We complain—we blame them. Some kind of other for us not getting what we want. But in fact, we're not getting what we want because our seeds are not ripening. 

We either don't have them. Or they haven't been added to sufficiently yet to get them to cross the threshold. 

A deed not done can't bring a result, so we're going to stop expecting stuff to happen that we haven't created. 

It really helps a lot to take this one seriously.

I know for a long time I just thought, Oh yeah, Duh. All this stuff I don't do, it's not going to bring me a result. Yeah. 

Oh, but wait a minute. There's stuff I'm not doing that I want to do because I want those results and that's the only way they're going to happen. 

4. LE JE-PA CHU MI-SA-WA - karma done not just disappear

LE JE-PA means a karma done

MI-SA-WA means not disappear

CHU, it's a long U. It means ‚just‘, like merely.

A deed done won't just go away. 

A seed planted will not just disappear on its own. 

Once it's planted, it's planted. 

It may grow faster, slower, bigger, littler. There are all kinds of things that we can do to influence it. But we can't expect to not get a result from something that we've done without doing something specifically to interfere with that seed making its results someday. But now we can do that. But we have to do something. We have to make imprints to keep that seed from being able to ripen. Otherwise all seeds will eventually ripen, not meaning all at once. 

The very process is that seeds won't just disappear. And again, if we're honest with ourselves, we expect, Oh yeah, I can tell that white little white lie, it won't come back to me. Or we don't even think it through that far. It's right to tell the little white why because it's right to get the advantage and the business deal, and that's what I had to do to get it. And it makes a lot of people happy. But when we get lied to for somebody to get the upper hand, is that pleasant? No. 

So how could a deed that's going to bring me an unpleasant result have been the actual cause for the pleasant result of getting the advantage in the business deal?

It can't be. It seems like it was. But it can't be. Because getting the business deal was pleasant, and being lied to is unpleasant. 

So, once we recognize, Yuck, I have a lot of unpleasant seeds in there that I guess they're just haven't gotten over the threshold yet, because life's pretty good. Am I doomed? And of course, no. 

As long as we do something right to damage them, to work with them. 

The seeds won't just go away on their own. 

A deed not done can't bring a result. 

A deed done is gonna bring a result. Eventually. Unless we do a good four powers. So karma is definite. 

Pleasantness comes from kindness.

Unpleasantness comes from unkindness. 

Karma grows. So little bitty kindnesses will bring big pleasures. Little bitty unkindnesses will bring big unpleasantness. 

I can't get a result if I haven't made the cause. So stop expecting things to come for nothing. 

And once I've made a cause, that seed’s in there, it's growing. It's not gonna just disappear. 

With these four in mind, we‘ve recognized that our behavior in the now is where our power lies. Our behavior in the now is our choices how to act—body, speech, mind. That's the arena within which we are planting our seeds. 

Those seeds are gonna ripen eventually. 

If we plant seeds, anyone of which will ripen into some pleasant result, then really, who cares how and when they ripen? We know they're going to be fine. They're going to be great. 

So we can focus on our interaction with others as the most important piece because it's there that we're planting those seeds. We don't have to worry so much if we've got our seed planting strategy clear. The clearness comes from: What's this going to be like when it comes back to me? It's a good rule of thumb.

W e'll talk more. There's a whole course on karma. Where we'll talk more about all the different little subtle situations. Well, you know, the bum guy, he just wants alcohol. If I give him alcohol, and somebody knows, I just want hot chocolate. By giving him alcohol, I'm gonna get hot chocolate in the future, so I'll give him alcohol. But some part of me seems to be aware that he'll hurt himself with alcohol. So, No. Although that's what he wants, I don't want to be given something that I will use to hurt myself. So I'm not going to give him what he wants in the moment. 

If from my imprint making it's going to be something that hurts them, even if it would give them great pleasure, worldly pleasure that wears out. Now if he's in the DTS and it would save his life, that's something different. 

None of this is black and white or cut and dried. So the more we understand, the more powerful we can use this learning as guidelines for our choices, and then we do the best we can at any given moment.

We're struggling against our habit, our mental affliction, our belief in what everybody expects of us, and what we're trying to aspire to do, and it's a struggle. And the struggle is a huge virtue, so it's worth trying. 

So the general rule of the behaviors to choose from are to avoid those ten non virtues and try to choose instead their opposite, the 10 virtues. 

That again we will go into greater detail about again and again and again. 

Avoiding killing. Avoiding stealing. Avoiding sexual misconduct. Avoiding lying. Harsh speech. Splitting people apart with our speech. Useless speech. Jealousy. Ill will. Wrong view.

Which forms the basis for all our other vows, since you guys are ahead of the ball game. 

So in the verses Je Tsongkapa uses these two situations or phrases

Stop desire for this life and 

Stop desire for future life.

And again, it doesn't mean reach that point where you don't care whether you live or die. That's not stopping desire for this life. 

Or that you don't care if you have a rebirth or not. 

That stopping desire for this life and future life is stopping desire for more of the same worldly human life. Thinking that if I just get more worldly life, I can achieve my worldly goal. 

So, worldly life we are working on recognizing that the things I think are the causes of my happiness aren't really the real causes of my happiness.

Giving up desire for this life is cultivating the desire to figure out and then make the real causes for happiness. And when we're making the real causes for happiness, worldly benefits are a side effect. Because of how we go about helping others to get happiness. It will bring the worldly ways that happiness comes back to us as well—but that's not the goal. Do you see? 

We run the risk of thinking, OK, great. I'm going to understand how to use this human life so well that I want another one. And another one. And another one. Because it's such a perfect opportunity. And curiously, they say, well, yes and no.

Yes, having a human lifetime is the perfect opportunity for making swift progress on our spiritual, evolutionary path. 

But it's not that we want to cling to our desire for more human life if we're still thinking of human life in the same old way. So we're not wanting to aspire to more worldly human life. We obviously don't aspire to lower realm life. And we're learning, we'll learn more, not to aspire to worldly God life, because it's all a dead end. A big dead end. Like, what are we supposed to aspire to? 

Yeah, Buddhahood, but the lamas will say, Look. To be sure that you're not letting your renunciation stagnate thinking, Oh, another human life would be great. Let's consider the six unique sufferings to human life. Not just Sansara in general, but specific to a human life. There are these six kinds of suffering that if we are still aspiring to more human life, a future one, for instance, we don't understand how bad it really is. So these are more subtle. 

6 kinds of suffering to human life

I did not write them down. I will read them to you. So these are the six sufferings of Human realm:

1. NGE-PA ME-PAY NYE-PA = there is no certainty in life

Means the problem where there is nothing definite, there is no certainty. 

In our human realm anything could happen at any moment. 

We're not certain when our death times going to be. We're not certain we're gonna keep our job. We're not certain there'll be lunch tomorrow. We're not certain. 

Nothing is certain. Intellectually, we all know that. Or maybe deep down in our gut, we know that, which is why we have problems with anxiety, right? But we've gotten really good at putting that all on the back burner. Because if we were living in that, Oh my gosh, anything could happen. Anything could happen. We would be nervous wrecks. We would not be functional at all. 

And yet it's an underlying suffering that we don't know what's going to ripen next. Which really means it's pretty much a miracle that I could drive my car 8 miles to the doctor's office, and stop at the recycle on the way back and get home in time to attend my exercise class with no mishap. It's just like, yeah, I expect that. 

But really, it was a Joana‘s WOW factor. I could have been WOW-ing the whole time. Oh my gosh, this is amazing. But I don't. I take it for granted. But that's a suffering. And so, when we talk about pervasive suffering, and it's just the fact that we're dying, there's a lot of stuff in pervasive suffering.

They don't formally say this is in there, but when you think about it, it's so pervasive we don't even notice. 

2. NGON-PA ME-PAY NYE-PA = you are never satisfied

NGON-PA ME-PAY NYE-PA means the problem of there's never any satisfaction. Like that rock'n'roll song. They got it right. „You can't get no…“ Everybody can sing that song. 

There's something about our misunderstanding that makes it such that when our seeds ripen to get what we want, we're not really satisfied with it. 

We think we are momentarily. And then we want more. We want different. Something goes wrong. 

There's something about our ignorance and selfishness that makes it such that we're incapable of satisfaction. And that's a suffering. Implying that we could be completely satisfied all the time. 

But if we think about that, if I was completely satisfied all the time, would I ever get out of bed? Would anything motivate me to go do anything else? Would it be a good thing to be completely satisfied? Apparently it is. But it doesn't really make sense given old world view as being the way the world works. 

3. LU YANG-NE YANG-DU DOR-WAY NYE-PA = you must discard your body over and over again

YANG-DU is that over and over again. We had it before about taking on the bodies over and over and the definition of Sansara. This one, LU YANG-NE YANG-DU is about we're forced to discard our bodies. The problem of having to discard our body again and again and again. So as humans we have to give up that body.

I don't know, suppose we have enough goodness that we get another human body, that one we're forced to give up too. 

They say that given infinite mindstream, we have given up bodies in number that if you piled them all up, it would be bigger than Mount Meru. A lot. 

We're saying specific human bodies, and of course there were all those other bodies in between—animal bodies, I guess hell bodies. No, they're not. I don't know. But anyway, lots of bodies. We've given him up. We've gone through death, and all that pain, and distress over and over and over and over and over again. And we must know it on some level, even before we're told about it. Because it's included as one of the human sufferings. Implies we don't have to give up the body over and over again. 

4. YANG-YANG NYING-TSAM JOR-WAY NYE-PA = you must we born over and over again

YANG-YANG, which is even shorter for YANG-DU YANG-DE, NYING-TSAM JOR-WAY NYE-PA the problem of having to cross over, over and over again, which means take birth again and again. 

So it's two different human sufferings—to lose our body again and again and to be forced into a rebirth again and again and again. Different kinds of subtle sufferings that we don't even recognize. 

Because they want us to recognize.

Because they don't want us to aspire to more human, worldly, human life. 

They want us to aspire to reaching our goal in this life. They don't say that just yet. But that's what they are taking us. They're hoping our own mind will go. 

Well then I got to do it in this life if I don't want more human life, and all the others are not acceptable. I got at least become Bodhisattva, so I can have Bodhisattva human life. Anyway, we'll learn. 

5. YANG-YANG TO-MEN-DU GYUR-WAY NYE-PA = After high, then comes low

It means that it‘s a human‘s suffering that over and over again, highs always drop to low. Things are going really well. They don't say, swap back and forth. The actual term just says highs always dropp to low. 

But obviously lows then also go back to highs. 

I think they don't want to point that out so much because we would use that to say, Yeah, yeah, see, being a human is not so bad. 

Because from low goes to high, and that's what I want.

So they don't emphasize that. They just say, when everything's going good, you're gonna lose it. Eventually. And we know that to be true.

6. DROK ME-PAY NYE-PA = you go through life alone and die alone

The problem in which there is no companion, there's no friend. 

It seems like we are becoming more and more aware of the necessity of social interactions. To be lonely is as bad a risk as smoking for a heart disease and other things. And so we really have this deep need to be amongst other people. 

We somehow thrive on that. Yet we're doing it in a mistaken way.

This teaching says that, Yes, we're amongst others, yes, we're interacting with others and yes, we need them to actually plant our seeds. But in the end, when this life is done, they can be all around our bedside. But we go alone.

We go through the dissolution and we shift states on our own, by ourselves. 

But we take with us all those karmic seeds from the behaviors that we did towards and on behalf of those people. 

So we have our group of loved ones. We act towards them in certain ways, probably mostly good and on their behalf. Maybe there were circumstances where we needed to do things that were not so kind to others on behalf of my people.

Those seeds have been made.

When we die, the people disappear from our lives. But the seeds that we made on their behalf go with us. 

So good seeds that go with us, Hooray. 

But unkindness to other beings on behalf of our people, those seeds also go on and will come back as unpleasantness to us. 

Yeah, but I did that for them. It should ripen on them.

Sorry. It's your seeds. 

Our seeds are all that goes on with us when we die.

So there is this suffering that as we die, we have this awareness that all those people that we cared for and did for, they can't do for us now. There is a bit of resentment or hurt which our state of mind that influence the process that's happening. 

That we don't want to have influenced. 

So all of this is designed to show us: I don't want, lower rebirth. I don't want a higher rebirth, although we haven't talked about it yet. And now I don't even want more human rebirth. 

What is it I want? I want spiritual progress rebirth, whatever that's going to look like. It's not going to happen without making the seeds for it to happen. And clearing out the seeds that are its opposite. 

So I better get to work, says my renunciation.

I better start working on my seeds that I already have and on cultivating the ones that I want to have in my mind when it moves from this life to the next. So that I don't have to worry about it. 

If my mind is full of great seeds, then the likelihood of a great seed popping at the moment of death and directing my next life is so much greater than a negative seed.

But if my mind is more full of negative seeds, then the likelihood of a negative one being the one that pushes me into my next life is greater than a good one. 

Just by way of the numbers.

The more lottery tickets you buy, the more likely you're going to win the lottery, right? Same idea. 

These four principles of karma with the six sufferings of human life is designed for us to be able to take our renunciation deeper.

What is the underlying cause of those six sufferings of human life? Is the misunderstanding of where unpleasantness comes from.

Understanding it's our behavior towards others, our renunciation is: I renunciate my selfish, ignorant habit to be constantly putting what I want first. 

We've already all grown up: Share, share. Be nice, be nice, right? We know the behaviors. We are wanting to add their power by way of now doing them, not because mom said so or the church said so, but because now I see that it's through those kindnesses that I create my future. 

So renunciation takes a little deeper meaning. We are renunciating our old world view. 

Then, when you turn that renunciation onto others in our similar situation, that renunciation grows into Bodhichitta.

In the text somebody says to Je Tsongkapa, 

How do you know when you've developed your renunciation? 

As if you're gonna develop it and have it once and for all. Which my own experience is you think you have it and then, Oh my gosh, there's more.

But he gives us this phrase that I want you to see, just because I want you to see the various words:

NYIN-TSEN KUN-TU TAR-PA DUN-NYER-LO

JUNG-NA DEY-TSE NGEN-JUNG KYE-PA LAK

NGEN-JUN is renunciation

KYE-PA means developed 

Our renunciation, it is developed when NYIN-TSEN—day night—KUN-TU TAR-PA—at those times freedom is in my mind, aspiring to freedom is in my mind. DUN-NYER-LO. That's when I have renunciation, is when I'm thinking both day and night of achieving freedom. 

Freedom from what? 

Freedom from my ignorance and selfishness. 

When we've got that worked out for ourselves, we recognize that our own seeds are making us see everybody else in that same boat, unless we automatically look out and we see everybody as Buddhas. 

Then we're seeing everybody as worldly: Bugs, rats, dogs, cats, cows, people. 

Then our seeds will force us to understand that they have the same misperception as me.

Do I know that for sure?

No.

Which gives us an opening for higher things.

But as long as it seems that way to me, then I understand their sufferings by way of my own. I understand their worldly likes by way of my own. And I can use that information to try to plant my seeds differently on their behalf. To change my seeds for seeing them as suffering beings, I need to change my behavior towards others. So renunciation turned on to others grows our Bodhichitta, our wish to reach total enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings.

We'll talk more about how our renunciation for suffering life turns into the wish for total Buddhahood. We're piercing it all together, part by part. 

All right, how about that? We did a class and a 1/2.

So your meditation is apparently an analytical meditation on those four explanations of how karma works.

Try not to think of them as laws, please. Think of them as explanations, and then how that relates to our renunciation, how it motivates us to change our behavior. Which is our renunciation. OK.

[Usual closing]

Alright, thank you my dears. Have a lovely weekend, I will see you Monday. Thank you. Thanks for working hard. Bye bye.

For the recording, welcome back. We are ACI course one 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. 

[Usual opening]

Now, let's listen to Je Tsongkapa telling us again the three principal paths. Watch your mind recognizing, Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. OK.

Hopefully it's becoming a little more familiar and there's still places it's like, What? 

It's not clear yet. 

I bow to all the high and holy lamas.

As far as I am able I’ll explain

The essence of all high teachings of the Victors,

The path that all their holy sons commend,

The entry point for the fortunate seeking freedom.

Listen with a pure mind, fortunate ones

Who have no craving for the pleasures of life,

And who, to make leisure and fortune meaningful, strive

To turn their minds to the path which pleases the Victors.

There's no way to end without pure renunciation,

This striving for pleasant results in the ocean of life.

It's because of their hankering life as well that beings

Are fettered, so seek renunciation first.

Leisure and fortune are hard to find, life‘s not long;

Think it constantly, stop desire for this life.

Think over and over how deeds and their fruits never fail,

And the cycle is suffering: stop desire for the future.

When you've meditated thus and feel not even

A moment's wish for the good things of cyclic life,

And when you begin to think both night and day

Of achieving freedom, you've found renunciation.

Renunciation though, can never bring

The total bliss of matchless Buddhahood

Unless it’s bound by the purest wish; and so,

The wise seek the high wish for enlightenment.

They’re swept along on four fierce river currents,

Chained up tight in past deeds, hard to undo,

Stuffed in a steel cage of grasping "self",

Smothered in the pitch-black ignorance.

In limitless rounds they're born, and in their births

They are tortured by three sufferings without break;

Think how your mothers feel, think of what's happening

To them: try to develop this highest wish.

You may master renunciation and the wish,

But unless you have the wisdom perceiving reality

You cannot cut the root of cyclic life.

Make efforts in ways then to perceive interdependence.

A person’s entered the path that pleases the Buddhas

When for all objects in the cycle or beyond,

He sees that cause and effect can never fail,

And when for him they lose all solid appearance.

You have yet to realize the thought of the Able

As long as two ideas seem to you disparate:

The appearance of things—infallible interdependence;

And emptiness—beyond taking any position.

At some point they no longer alternate, come together;

Just seeing that interdependence never fails

Brings realization that destroys how you hold to objects,

And then your analysis with view is complete.

In addition, the appearance prevents the existence extreme;

Emptiness that of non-existence, and if

You see how emptiness shows in cause and effect

You'll never be stolen off by extreme views.

When you've grasped as well as I the essential points

Of each of the three principal paths explained,

Then go into isolation, my child, make mighty

Efforts, and quickly win your ultimate wish.

In the course of our training here, we learned what Sansara is really comprised of, and we've been cultivating this recognition of how obvious things are suffering. Even good things that wear out are suffering. And how, even as we're enjoying those good things before they wear out. We're losing them and ourselves inexorably–pervasive suffering. 

At this very beginning level, we don't really even know how it's possible to stop it. Although we do. But if we didn't, we could still be cultivating this renunciation: This is just such a broken world. There's something wrong with this picture. There's got to be some way to change it. 

I don't know what it is yet, necessarily, but I've had it. I went out of here, which is how at that level we would say that I want out of here, thinking Sansara is a place that's so broken, and we want to get out. We understand that really, we need to stop perpetuating the darn place. And there's nowhere really we have to go, except into our own mind and our own behavior. 

We get these glimpses of, Gosh, there's gotta be a better way. 

And then we get teaching, saying, Yeah, in fact it's all unnecessary. It's born of karma and karma is movement of the mind when it makes us do, So, if you wanna really stop suffering you have to change your karma. And in order to change our karma, it's very helpful to understand what it is and how it's made, and those principles of karma. Which are called the laws of karma, but they're not really laws as we are recognizing, they are explanations for why things happen the way that they do.

We were given 4 principles of karma, that if we could unravel those neatly would explain why things happen the way they do. And by implication, then how to go about making things happen in the way that we want them to, meaning to end the doors to lesser rebirth–if that's our motivation, to reach Nirvana–if that's our motivation, to reach Buddhahood–if that's our motivation. Which is what tonight's class is going to be about. 

Somebody give me those four principles of karma. Give me the first one. 

[Joana ] Karma is definite, meaning that same makes same. So kindness is pleasant result, and unkindness will be an unpleasant result, always.

[Lama Sarahni] But same makes same means apples make apples. 

You could be misunderstood, you see. It's true. But it's misunderstandable. So what you said second to clarify–any pleasant result can only come from some kind of past kindness. So, it's definite that kind deeds will bring pleasant results, and unkind deeds bring unpleasant results. And then in parentheses, no matter what it looks like, no matter how it appears to us. OK, good. 

So what's the second one? 

[Chong] The consequences will be greater than action. 

[Lama Sarahni] Exactly. We do some teeny little kindness and the goodness that comes back is going to be bigger and more. And we do some teeny kind of selfishness, and guess what? The longer it takes to come back to us, the bigger and uglier will be the unpleasantness that comes back. Third one is what? 

[Joana] Nothing done, no result. 

[Lama Sarahni] Yeah, no deed done, no result. Which we go, Duh. When things aren't happening that we want them to we find somebody to blame instead of saying, Oh no seed. Either no seed at all, or no seed ripening either way. If we want a result, we've got to create the cause. That's what this one saying. And the 4th one?

[Ale] Karma never leaves.

[Lama Sarahni] Yeah, never just disappears. Never disappear. Right. So we can't just say, Oh, yeah, gone and done. Until the result has come to fruition and then it does disappear. So once it ripens, it's done and gone. But until it ripens it won't just end itself, we have to do something. The implication is we can do something to get those seeds to end, but they're not going to just do it by themselves. Good. Four Laws of Karma. 

So then the other question on your quiz was, how do you know when you really have renunciation? 

[Ale] It's like when you become a mother, you think day and night about the achieving the highest realization. And when you are a mom, you think day and night of your son. It never stops. 

[Lama Sarahni] That's a perfect analogy. Because it's not so much always the word thoughts in your mind. Because you're at work, you're doing your thing. But still there's your concern in the back of your mind. So with renunciation it's: Nothing in this world goes right. Even that process is wrong, is mistaken. And I've got it end it. When it’s in there constantly. Because it's gonna be coloring our behavior–is the idea. And then when we take that deep realization of suffering and look into the others in our world, and we go, Wow. There's so much more suffering than just mine out there. And we reach this inkling that that's just unacceptable. As unacceptable as mine was until it brought me to renunciation. The suffering I see in my world is equally unacceptable. We call that turning our renunciation onto others. That's the start of our growing wish. ‘Try to develop this highest wish.’ 

Tonight's class is about achieving freedom, our renunciation is saying, I'm thinking day and night about how to achieve freedom for me. 

That’s going to spark or turn on the actual ability to do so. Which is going to turn on this next process, the process of the greater vehicle. 

What's it gonna look like as we are in fact working to stop our own suffering and all the suffering that there is or could ever be? That growing state of mind is called 

JANG SEM = Bodhichitta.

Definition of Bodhichitta

Bodhichitta is the second of the three principal paths. It's a Sanskrit word. Literally it means 

Bodhichitta = Buddha mind. 

Bodhi = Buddha 

Chitta = mind 

But when the Tibetans were translating, they found that that was so easily misunderstood to mean already Buddha mind. Which would be ultimate love, ultimate compassion, ultimate wisdom, which would mean omniscient. And our Bodhichitta isn’t an omniscient state of mind yet. But it's a crucial piece to creating the causes for that. 

So when the Tibetans translated it, they used the term JANG SEM, which is a contraction of two longer words: JANG CHUB SEMKYE

JANG CHUB = having cleaned out all mental afflictions and obstacles to omniscience by way of training. So that's what they call Buddha. Someone who's free of mental afflictions and obstacles to omniscience by way of what they did to create that result out of causes, JANG CHUB.

Then SEMKYE 

SEM = mind, but SEMKYE means the mind that wishes to become JANG CHUB. SEMKYE.

So JANG SEM does literally mean Buddha mind, like Bodhichitta means Buddha mind. But Bodhichitta really means JANG CHUB SEMKYE–the wish to have a Buddha mind and the intention to create it, to reach it. And the one who has this JANG CHUB SEMKYE state of mind is called JANG CHUB SEMPA. 

PA = the one who's doing it, the guy. Je Tsongkapa–the guy from Tsongka. 

So guy meaning man or woman. The person who is doing, JANG CHUB SEMPA. 

Now keep in mind that reaching JANG CHUB does not make us all powerful. 

Fully enlightened beings are not omnipotent. 

They cannot take our karma. They can't make us do stuff. They don't make our circumstances. But their omniscient state of mind experiences directly what each of us needs to give up and take up our own behavior changes, unique to each of us. 

If they could just stick that in us, or take the yuck out of us, they would. 

But our karma is our karma. They can only teach us how to change. And then we have to do the work. 

So the term JANG CHUB SEMKYE has within it this understanding that the goal that we're trying to reach–Buddhahood–is this being made out of countless kindnesses done with wisdom. That being is ultimate love, ultimate compassion, and omniscient. 

So our growing Bodhichitta is saying, I want to reach that state. 

But that's only half of it. Because our own happiness is reached at Nirvana. Which comes before actually our omniscience arising. So if our wish for Buddhahood was only for our own benefit, it's not enough. We'll just stop at Nirvana. So there's something more in this Bodhichitta wish. The reason we're willing to go to the extra trouble to become total Buddha is because other’s suffering that we can't actually change in them without their behavior changing, is as unacceptable to us as our own. 

So it's not satisfactory to stop at my own Nirvana. I need to become one who can help others reach their Nirvana or better. So Bodhichitta, full, when we're trying to really get the state of mind accurately, it’s: I want others suffering to stop. I really won’t be capable of helping others to stop their suffering forever without reaching my omniscience and love state. So I have to become a total Buddha. So that I can help all those others become it too. So they can help all the others in their world become it too. So they can help all those... Do you see it? 

You can't ever stop saying why you're wanting to reach Buddhahood, because it keeps rippling out. And if we leave Bodhichitta as ‘I want to become Buddha’, and don't add this other part “So that I can help everybody become that too’, then what our mind is hearing us say about wanting to become Buddha is incomplete. So it won't really get us there. 

It's cumbersome. Bodhichitta means: I wanna reach my total Buddhahood so I can help everybody reach theirs, so they can help everybody reach theirs... 

So what we're doing in these classes is building up this meaning of Bodhichitta and putting it in that word, either Bodhichitta or JANG SEM, or Buddha. So that as you're Bodhichitta state of mind is growing, you don't need to keep saying the long version over and over. It's what the mind means when it just thinks ‘Bodhichitta’. Like Ali doesn't have to keep repeating her son's name to remind him, right? She has a… I don’t even know what to call it, it's not even a full on thought, it's an awareness of her concern for him and him. Our Boshichitta is growing in that way. 

Some say, Oh yeah, Bodhichitta and the one who has it, a Bodhisattva, it's just a really, really, really compassionate person. And the slightest little bit of suffering disturbs them and they're willing to do anything, food, homes, anything anybody needs, they're so amazing in that way. But all those worldly ways that we help, they are helpful, but they're temporary. 

In a sense, they're just perpetuating suffering. Because it looks like, Oh, I gave the panhandler guy ten whole dollars instead of one. I'm so proud of myself, he'll get to eat or drink or whatever he's going to do with that. And wow, I gave him a little bit of pleasure. But it's still going to be panhandling the next day. It's not enough for him to change his whole attitude and lifestyle. So it's not enough for me to change my attitude and lifestyle either. 

Not that we don't do the worldly things. And this class is going to show us that there's a way we can actually do those worldly deeds with a state of mind that make those same deeds become causes for our Bohichitta–the real one–, and then causes for our Buddhahood–the real one. Same deed, different state of mind, different awareness as we're doing it. 

Our compassion starts by noticing other people's suffering. Things that we weren't really willing to look at before. And then it grows to even recognizing that people who in our worldly arena are doing pretty well. They're affluent, they've got good jobs, they've got families. It looks like things are going good for them. They don't need my compassion. But they do, you see. Because if we don't also see them as understanding that where all that goodness came from was their own kindness, and they're doing something to perpetuate it, then they're using those seeds up. And so our level of compassion goes deeper. Geshe Michael said, Do we have compassion for the Bill Gates of this world? Do we have compassion or the benefactors of the extra…never mind. I lost the word. 

Bodhichitta is this other’s suffering is unacceptable, even their pervasive suffering. Especially their pervasive suffering. That attitude is turned on to any and all conscious beings. It's easy to have our Bodhichitta towards those we love. Yes. Somewhat easy to have it towards those we like, but we're not so close or fond of. It's harder towards neutral people, but it's still possible, and it's really hard towards those that we don't like. Let alone those who scare us like rattlesnakes, scorpions, creepy things like that. They're sentient beings suffering as well. Does our compassion extend to the mosquito? And the gnat and the cockroach? And then what about existing beings we don't even see, we can't be aware of. And future ACI courses teach us about these realms beyond our physical senses, based on the scriptural authority, but we can confirm it with logic even if we can't see them directly. And as we learn about what could logically be true as a realm of existence, we have more beings to extend our Bodhichittaa towards. If we leave a single being out of our wish to bring them to their complete enlightenment, our complete enlightenment will not be complete. 

This tradition is really kind. They say, once you're on this path and studying and trying, you can call yourself a Bodhisattva. And then once you take your Bodhisattva vows, you can yourself a Bodhisattva. But, they say, technically speaking. 

We’re aspiring Bodhisattvas until we have the actual experience that's described as the experience of Bodhichitta. We're going to learn later that there's two of those. But the one we're talking about here, is the one that we've heard Geshe Michael teach. You have this heart opening experience and the liquid light shines out, and you see the face of every existing being individually, and you love them and you promise to them that you're gonna help them. And then it ends. 

It's like being in this state of being the ultimate love, compassion. You're not omniscient yet. But you do know that you're gonna do this. You don't quite know how you're going to do it. But your heart says, Oh man. I take responsibility to help them all and like, I won't quit until they're all free of suffering. 

We can have that experience without knowing anything about the pen thing. 

We can have the seeds for this exquisite feeling of love. Parents get it at the birth of their children. They get a little taste of it towards one being. Multiply that times Infinity. And it doesn't go away. That’s Buddha mind. 

Then, when we have this experience that lasts 20 minutes or so, it's one of those kinds of direct experiences that once it's over, you know you weren't nuts. So, although I would imagine that you think back and going, Man, maybe I ate some wrong mushrooms or something.

But you wouldn't because you know it was a direct experience. So you're forever changed after that. I mean, it would be startling, wouldn't it? To have this experience going, Oh my gosh, I saw the face of everybody, which means everywhere you go, everybody would look a little familiar. I've seen you before. I've seen you before. I can't remember where, but I've seen you before. Like all your different news. Oh, it's a big deal.

The point is, you don't have to be studying emptiness deeply and meditating regularly to have this experience happen. It's gonna happen as a result of seeds ripening. 

It's more likely to happen in a deep state of meditation than out. 

It's more likely to happen if we've been cultivating it. 

But we do hear stories of people, spontaneously–other traditions call it seeing the face of God. We can come out of it. If we've got, if we've had that experience and not have any training about it, it would be so exquisite. And then we come out of it and we can't get that exquisite feeling back again, even by remembering. And people go into that thing they call the Dark Night of the Soul. A depression, because they can't get it back. So to have an experience like that and to come out of it knowing what happened, understanding what happened, understanding that's not going to happen again for a while, a long time while, because we used up some really powerful seeds in that experience–we're less likely to go into this longing for getting it back right and feeling left incomplete by it. Rather we will be motivated by having had it to do something with it, to act on it. 

To have this experience is what technically makes us Mahayana.

We say. I'm a Buddhist of the Mahayana Tibetan Galupa track. 

But again, technically speaking, we aren't Mahayanist until we've had our Bodhichitta. We are aspiring Mahayanas and aspiring Bodhisattvas. It's not for us to go, Oh man, there I am back down at zero again. I'm never going to get there. Because it's incredible to be an aspiring Mahayanist and aspiring Bodhisattva, and to realize the nuance of that term. So don't go to somebody else outside of our tradition and say, You think you're a Bodhisattva but unless you've had that experience, you're just aspiring. Just assume they have had the experience, OK Bodhisattva. 

Although I don't think Bodhisattvas really called them Bodhisattvas. Other people call them Bodhisattvas.

The sutras start out by showing us the benefits of growing our Bodhichitta. The benefits of having Bodhichitta that we're growing by cultivating it. It's called sugar cane Bodhichitta. Every time we go through that opening of class, think of the other person, I really want to help them, worldly ways fell short. I want to help them ultimately, I need the help of my teacher—that's growing our our Bodhichitta. 

To grow it and then still have it in mind as we're doing class is included in all the imprints that we're making in this class.

So it‘s useful to be aspiring Bodhisattva, aspiring to seeing emptiness directly—different topic. Because that aspiration goes into the seeds as well, and that grows. So don't count yourself short just because I just told you you aren't really Mahayana unless you've had your heart opening, and I don't know whether you have or not. I might just assume you all have.

The Scripture gives us 

9 benefits of Bodhichitta

For your homework, you get to write down any six of those. Unless you want extra credit, then put all nine. And for your meditation practice you get to finally shift from renunciation—pointing out all that's wrong with life—and you get to turn it on to one or two of these benefits of Bodhichitta. Think about what I tried to explain it meant. Explore a little bit of what it means to you and then imagine being a being who is that. So you'll be, we'll see when we get to the end of class. 

Let's start. Let me give you these nine benefits of Bodhichitta.

JANGCHUB SEMPA means the Bodhisattva Warrior

Here are the nine different benefits of cultivating our JANGCHUB SEMPA-hood.

            Jangchub sempa

*gewa namkyen gyi gyu

*hlami chak jar upa

*nyenrang silgyi nunpa

*gewa chungse tekchen gyi chu

*gewa chungse gyelse kyi chupa

*sangye namkyi se su gong

*jangchub sempa namkyi pundu gong

*tekchen la shuk

*tsechik la tsang gya

1. GE-WA NAM-KYEN GYI GYU = your good deeds are a cause for omniscience

GYU = cause

GYI GYU = the cause of

NAMKYEN = omniscience

GEWA = a good deed

So, when we have Bodhichitta, a good deed becomes cause for our omniscience. That's cool. Do we have to do some special deed to make omniscience? No, any old kindness done with a mind imbued with Bodhichitta. 

The seed that's planted by that deed is now a cause for our omniscience. 

Because that state of mind of Bodhichitta is this state of mind that's aspiring to the loftiest goal for the biggest number of being‘s benefit. 

Like all sentient beings means all. However many there are.

Buddhahood means this ultimate state of mind of love, compassion, wisdom.

When we have that state of mind imbuing our doing the dishes, the doing the dishes seeds that are being planted include this lofty goal for the highest number of beings benefit. It's still just doing dishes. Which we already do, from time to time at least. 

Any kindness done with Bodhichitta becomes a cause for our omniscience. 

Versus kindnesses being the cause for some pleasant result that wears out. Same deed. 

2. HLA-MI CHAK-JAR U-PA = you are a person worthy being bowed down to by humans and gods (pleasure beings)

JAR UPA = worthy to be

UPA = worthy

JAR UPA = we are worthy for something to happen

HLAMI CHAK = God's and humans bow down

A being who has Bodhichitta is worthy of God's and humans bowing down to them. This one's weird. Do we aspire for gods and humans to bow down to us? 

I don't know about you, but no, I am not really interested in that. 

But, what it means to be worthy of being bowed down to means that we are a powerful karmic object. Both in the sense of negative deeds done towards us will influence that other in a stronger way, negatively. And positive deeds done towards us will influence that other in that in a stronger positive way. 

This one's really hard. I still really have it on the shelf because: Wouldn't they have to know? And people in my world don't even know what we're talking about, let alone to see Bodhichitta or not. 

And yet, there's this story of fly that manages to fly around the stupa, has just created this incredible merit. They don't know it's a stupa. Come on. It lends it to there's some self existent nature in there, but that of course is not that correct conclusion. 

We're at a beginning class, so it would be a big tangent for us to try to sort that out. So it's benefit #2, is: We become worthy to be bowed to by God's and men. 

Meaning they will gain benefit from honoring us. 

They will gain benefit from honoring us. 

One way that sort of played out in my mind is, I had grown that habit, as many of us do, when somebody compliments us, we deflect it in some way. Oh yeah, yeah but... To keep us from getting prideful I think, we sort of do this. But really, for that person to hear themselves giving us praise and then to hear us negate it in some way is doing them a disservice. Especially if we know we have footage of them. 

Then it's not that we'll go, Oh yeah, thank you for noticing. 

It will be, Thank you for sharing. Nice to know you feel that way. I like your seeds, but I can only do that in a certain arena. 

So there's a benefit to Bodhichitta in this way. 

God's means pleasure being realm beings.We won't get into it now.

3. NYEN-RANG SIL-GYI NUN-PA = you outshine Listeners and Self-made Buddhas

SILGYI NUNPA = to outshine the others. 

Geshela used the analogy like the bride outshines all the other women at the wedding, even if the other women are far more beautiful than she. She still just outshines them all. 

Who does a Bodhisattva outshine? 

NYENRANG = listeners and self-made Buddha

‚Listeners and self-made Buddha‘ here is referring to practitioners whose goal is either closing the door to lesser rebirth, or doing that plus reaching Nirvana. They've set about to learn how karma works, and how the wheel of life works, and to train themselves in ethical discipline in order to burn off and damage their mental afflictions and seeds for more. 

They can be very advanced. But someone who's had this heart opening experience of Bodhichitta outshines the listener and self-made Buddha. Because what they've experienced is real compassion. And this listener and self-made they don't have the impulse to grow compassion for others. Their renunciation doesn't turn on to others. So compassion isn't a big issue. It's not something they're cultivating. And it would be a good debate. It's like, how can you study karma and work on karma and have it never occurred to you that other people would benefit from this too? That seems to me, would be enough to just start growing compassion. But there are many, many stories of beings who have reached Arhat, which is Nirvana, not Buddhist, not Mahayanist but high level practitioners. Well then what happens? Their Nirvana, free of all mental afflictions, they don't suffer anymore—is that forever? 

They say well, at some point something shifts there. Freedom from suffering is complete and forever. But they realize they're missing compassion. So they're missing omniscience, and so they can't help others. They somehow have to start again with those countless of eons of growing compassion. That must go faster because they've got a certain amount of wisdom, but not wisdom imbued with Bodhichitta, do you see? 

Their wisdom was imbued with wanting to reach Nirvana. Which got them there.

A Bodhisattva outshines even Arhat, if the Arhat has no Bodhichitta. Not meaning they won't have compassion towards others, but not this highest compassion that we're talking about. 

Let's take a break and we'll then do 4 and the rest.

[break]

[Luisa] In the 1000 angels practice, why did Tsongkapa write like I pray—I forgot exactly the wording, but something like in my future lives I am always with my lamas. Because the idea is not to have future lives. 

[Lama Sarahni] That's a sutra practice. It’s not about getting enlightened in this one lifetime. It's about staying within the Dharma. 

So in this text when it says give up desire for future life, it means future mistaken worldly life. It doesn't mean no life at all. 

[Luisa] As Buddhas we can't have lives anymore because we are not reborn and reborn and reborn, right? But so don't we still want.

[Lama Sarahni] Oh, I see what you're saying. We won’t be near our lama, but we'll be omniscient. So we'll be aware of them constantly. 

[Luisa] But then there are Buddhas with higher levels than other Buddhas. You know for example my lama who is a Buddha who then when I am a Buddha then I meet them and then they'll have like higher Buddha. 

[Lama Sarahni] No, just like put up before, not higher. I think they're all Buddha is Buddha. They helped us get there so we’ll have a sense of honor.

It’s the Bodhisattva Bhumis. They specialize. They're all enlightened, but this one specializes in helping people with their wisdom. This one specializes into helping people purify. This one specializes like how the 35 Buddhas, you know, say this one's name. It purifies 1000 eons of that kind of behavior. That's like somehow they said this is going to be my specialty. 

[/end break]

4. GE-WA CHUNG-SE TEK-CHEN GYI CHU = the tiniest good deed that you do is Mahayana Dharma

GEWA = good deed

CHUNGSE = the tiniest little. 

It's a fun word—CHUNGSE. The tiniest little good deed

TEKCHEN = Mahayana, a Mahayana Dharma. 

When we have Bodhichitta, the tiniest little good deed is a Dharma of the Mahayana. Dharma meaning existing thing, meaning teaching, meaning practice. So when we have Bodhichitta, the tiniest little goodness is a Mahayana Dharma. Meaning moving us along the path to our total Buddhahood because that's what Mahayana means—on behalf of every other being. 

It's only a little bit more specific than the first one that every good deed is a cause for our omniscience. This one says even the tiniest little bit is our Mahayana path. 

Maybe we feed the birds and we put the seed out there and it's like, I'm just trying to make the bird's life a little bit easier. Then we can think, Well, they just go on to be a hungry bird later. May my feeding the bird help them have a connection to me so that someday I can teach them how to stop their suffering forever. 

Same deed putting out seed for the bird, different state of mind makes it a worldly kindness that will bring a good result that will wear out. 

Somebody's sending you dinner every two weeks and the difference between that—which is lovely—and creating that being’s avenue for their total Buddhahood.

Geshela describes that you can do this act of truth. You've got some crumbs and there are birds hopping around. OK, I'm gonna take this crumb and I'm gonna put it over there. And you, little bird, if it's true that my Bodhichitta is genuine, then if you eat that piece of bread, you and I are connected. And I will bring you to your total enlightenment someday any way. And see whether the bird comes and eats the piece of bread. 

If it doesn't, it's like, well then I guess my Bodhichitta is not genuine yet. 

If it does, it's like alright, hooked. 

Same deed, the little piece of bread, different state of mind.

Geshela says when we have Bodhichitta imbued, our bad deeds are less detrimental and our good deeds are way more powerful.

Then someone asks, once you have the mind imbued with Bodhichitta, is it possible to lose it? Like, aren't I still likely to get angry or upset with myself or somebody else? And doesn‘t that like counter my wish to bring everybody to ultimate happiness that doesn't break that Bodhichitta? And they say, No. Because the sense of Bodhichitta will arise in us very quickly, a regret for our mental affliction and action from it. So that swift regret keeps that negative seed from having a chance at tripping away at our Bodhichitta. It's like our Bodhichitta seeds are so much stronger, we really can't lose it once we've had that direct experience. Because that state of mind wants all beings benefit. And that word all again, take some time to really make all mean all. Bigger than infinity, you could say. That's what is making the power of these ideas so strong.

5. GE-WA CHUNG-SE GYEL-SE KYI CHU-PA = the smallest action is the activity of a Bodhisattva

You guys know better about Gyelse. The tiniest little good deed, GEWA CHUNGSE GYELSE KYI CHUPA. The tiniest little good deed is the activity of a Bodhisattva once we have Bodhichitta in our heart. 

This ones really similar to the one before, just from a little different perspective. 

6. SANG-YE NAM-KYI SE-SU GONG = all Buddhas consider you their son or daughter

SESU = son or daughter

SANGYE NAM = the Buddhas, plural

SANGYE is Buddha. You add NAM after and it means more than one. Kind of means all of them. 

SE SU GONG = they all consider us their son or daughter 

Once we have Bodhichitta all the Buddhas consider us their son or daughter. 

Now all Buddhas are omniscient. They already know us. But in sort of a vague kind of way. Like one face in a crowd. And once we have Bodhichitta they have this closer relationship with us. We become son or daughter. Not like a son or daughter. Son or daughter. Which means like any parent, they'll be there for us. 

The analogy they give is the king and queen. They're getting older and they don't have any heir. Finally, they have a son. This son is so exquisitely precious because he's the one who's going to carry on the Kingdom and they're going to do everything they can to give him a good life, train him well, they are readily available to help him at the drop of a hat. Buddhas are like that for us once we have Bodhichitta. 

7. JANG-CHUB SEM-PA NAM KYI PUN DU GONG = all Bodhisattvas consider you their brother or sister

SESU = son, daughter

PUNDU = brother, sister

JANGCHUB SEMPA = all the other Bodhisattvas consider us brother, sister.

With our Bodhichitta we have joined this new family. All the Buddhas are our moms and dads, and all the Bodhisattvas who got there ahead of us are our older brothers and sisters. And they want to help us. They want to take care of us. When we took our Bodhisattva vows, there were the verses that come after, that say something like, Now I have joined the family of the Buddhas. I'm like under their care in some way, and I pledge that I will never do anything that will disgrace my pure and noble family. This is what that's talking about. It's like once we pledge our Bodhisattva aspiration by taking our vows, it's like we've been adopted into this new family. And then when we have the actual, our own perspective of being adopted into that family becomes much more real. 

8. TEK CHEN LA SHUK = you have entered into the Mahayana

LA SHUK = have entered into

SHUK = to enter 

TEK CHEN = the Mahayana 

So this is the one that says, once we achieve our Bodhichitta, we have actually entered into the Mahayana. With aspiring Bodhichitta, we are aspiring Marianas, and that's enough to get us going. 

But technically speaking, having Bodhichitta makes us Mahayana, regardless of our level of wisdom.

9. TSE-CHIK LA TSANG-GYA = with Bodhichitta you can become Buhha in one lifetime

TSANG GYA = to become Buddha

TSE CHIK = one life

One of the benefits of having fullon Bodhichitta is, it means that we can then reach Buddhahood in that same lifetime. It doesn't mean we will. But it means we can.

That means a person who's had Bodhichitta experience who is on the Diamond Way path, their results of the Diamond Way path will be all that much faster. Then if we're using the Diamond Way path to cultivate the Bodhichitta first. 

But still if we managed to do that, then we're in a position for that to take us the rest of the way to Buddhahood. 

Our Bodhichitta heart opening can happen independent of our seeing emptiness directly. Or they can be being trained simultaneously—which is the training we're in—so that our efforts to live like a Bodhisattva grows our goodness. And our goodness grows our wisdom. The two feed each other into the direct perception of both. Usually one after the other—can go either way.

With that shift in our understanding of the lack of self nature of everything, having been experienced imbued with this mind that once all being suffering to stop, now we are on that conveyor belt through the Bodhisattva bhumis to total Buddhahood. We will not stop at Nirvana. We will reach Nirvana on the way to Buddhahood as a side effect. We will carry out those new habits that we grew in cultivating that experience that stepped us onto the conveyor belt. We will continue to do those same deeds now with this mind imbued with both wisdom and compassion, the Bodhichitta of wisdom. 

So now our seeds are being planted with those two states of mind. Every seed, and they're growing by the power of that wish. 

So we can see how our change—it'll niggle along like this for a long time. And then some things start happening on JORLAM and they start to increase and increase and then they don't just keep going up. They do this. (Demonstrating up and down with her hands) But overall, they're headed towards the goal. 

And it all starts with cultivating this wish to reach that state of mind of knowing everybody's suffering is completely unnecessary, all the result of a big mistake. And wanting to do something about it. 

In our cultivation of that, we can impose the imbued mind. Pretend we have it. But then to be able to impose it, we have to think about it. So we would call it up in our mind. 

You're driving to work and we just drive to work.

Or we can be like saying to ourselves over and over, I'm driving safely to work in order that every being I don't drive into, I'm protecting their life and now we have this connection, and I'm gonna bring them to total enlightenment someday. 

Then you get to work and it's like: See, I did it. I set out to do it. Everybody I saw I made this connection to. Now I dedicate that to everybody's total Buddhahood, and now I'm into work. I'm gonna do my work as I ordinarily do to the best of my capacity, but now I'm really doing it, so that everybody I work with and my boss, and the clients, and everybody I'm doing what I'm doing, so that someday I can bring you everybody to their ultimate happiness. 

It's just imposing the thought on the same old things that we're doing. Now, not yelling at somebody, right? Don't impose it on selfish stuff. Impose it on our kindnesses. So that those kindnesses become causes for Buddhahood, not just pleasant results that wear out. 

If we're able to impose it in the time frame of a mental affliction arising where we're about to blast, it may very well be a tool for shifting that mental affliction in a different direction. That would take a high level of mindfulness, but we could get there. Like if I yell at this person cause I think they deserve it. I've just delayed my ability to help them reach happiness. So maybe I don't want to do that. Or maybe I decide I do. But either way, it's imbued with Bodhichitta, which sometimes you may need to yell at somebody imbued with Bodhichitta like at your kids. I don't think as a parent you can ever go without yelling at your kids, can you? They have to be yelled at sometimes to get the point across. But not with anger, with Bodhichitta.

Alright. I have a little note to myself here. I don't do it so much anymore. But back then I was training myself to think, as I'm giving things to others, I'm thinking, 

May this make you happy, and when you recognize that it in fact doesn't, come back and I'll teach you how to really get happy. 

Just a fleeting thought. 

Here for you. But when you see... I'll be here for you. Like that.

Alright, that's all I have for you for this class. So you get 1/2 an hour of free time. Unless you have questions. Yeah, everybody's good? 

The benefits of Bodhichitta. You only need to write 6 for your homework. 

[Usual closing]

For the recording, welcome back, we are ACI course 1, this is class 8 on August 10, 2023. 

[Usual opening]

Again, listen to Lama Tsongkapa. 

I bow to all the high and holy lamas.

As far as I am able I’ll explain

The essence of all high teachings of the Victors,

The path that all their holy sons commend,

The entry point for the fortunate seeking freedom.

Listen with a pure mind, fortunate ones

Who have no craving for the pleasures of life,

And who, to make leisure and fortune meaningful, strive

To turn their minds to the path which pleases the Victors.

There's no way to end without pure renunciation,

This striving for pleasant results in the ocean of life.

It's because of their hankering life as well that beings

Are fettered, so seek renunciation first.

Leisure and fortune are hard to find, life‘s not long;

Think it constantly, stop desire for this life.

Think over and over how deeds and their fruits never fail,

And the cycle is suffering: stop desire for the future.

When you've meditated thus and feel not even

A moment's wish for the good things of cyclic life,

And when you begin to think both night and day

Of achieving freedom, you've found renunciation.

Renunciation though, can never bring

The total bliss of matchless Buddhahood

Unless it’s bound by the purest wish; and so,

The wise seek the high wish for enlightenment.

They’re swept along on four fierce river currents,

Chained up tight in past deeds, hard to undo,

Stuffed in a steel cage of grasping "self",

Smothered in the pitch-black ignorance.

In limitless rounds they're born, and in their births

They are tortured by three sufferings without break;

Think how your mothers feel, think of what's happening

To them: try to develop this highest wish.

You may master renunciation and the wish,

But unless you have the wisdom perceiving reality

You cannot cut the root of cyclic life.

Make efforts in ways then to perceive interdependence.

A person’s entered the path that pleases the Buddhas

When for all objects in the cycle or beyond,

He sees that cause and effect can never fail,

And when for him they lose all solid appearance.

You have yet to realize the thought of the Able

As long as two ideas seem to you disparate:

The appearance of things—infallible interdependence;

And emptiness—beyond taking any position.

At some point they no longer alternate, come together;

Just seeing that interdependence never fails

Brings realization that destroys how you hold to objects,

And then your analysis with view is complete.

In addition, the appearance prevents the existence extreme;

Emptiness that of non-existence, and if

You see how emptiness shows in cause and effect

You'll never be stolen off by extreme views.

When you've grasped as well as I the essential points

Of each of the three principal paths explained,

Then go into isolation, my child, make mighty

Efforts, and quickly win your ultimate wish.

Last class we were learning about the benefits of Bodhichitta. We learned about the literal translation of the word Bodhichitta, Sanskrit word. And also the more expanded meaning of that word. 

Who can give me the literal English translation of Bodhichitta? 

[Ale] Buddha mind. 

[Lama Sarahni] So we don't get our Bodhichitta until we're Buddhas, right?

Wrong. Because it doesn't literally mean Buddha mind. So what does it really mean— Bodhichitta? Joana, what does it really mean?

[Joana] To have the wish to get enlightened for the benefit of every other being. 

[Lama Sarahni] Yeah. That aspiring to the Buddha mind. That our emptiness of our own mind means we will someday. 

It has those two components. The wish to reach total enlightenment—which is like the highest conceivable evolution of consciousness—and in order to bring all beings to that same state, beyond conceptual, lofty ideas. Between those two it creates the imprint on our mind that will—when it's included in our deeds of body, speech, and mind—those deeds then become actual causes for reaching that result. We learned. And so we learned these nine different benefits of cultivating this wish to reach total enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. Meaning growing the actual physical experience. Which technically, is what it takes for these nine to be full on going on. 

For your homework, you only needed to give six. But between all of us, I'm going to guess we have all nine, because not everybody's favorite six are going to be the same. So, somebody give me three please. Any three, Luisa. 

[Luisa] My favorite is any good deed is the cause for total omniscience. 

[Lama Sarahni] Yeah, I like that one too. 

[Luisa] And then the other one is all the Buddhas are going to see you as their daughter or son. And the other is that you can get unlimited in one lifetime. 

[Lama Sarahni] Yeah, yeah, nice. OK. Ale, give me three more peas. 

[Ale] You are part of the cool kids. It's the Bodhisattvas see you as brother and sister. The gods and humans bow to you. You outshine the self-made Buddhas and I don't remember

[Lama Sarahni] yeah, good, Hinayana level. Good, nice. We have three more. Who wants to play? Alright, Joana, you're up. 

[Joana] Any little good deed is a deed of a Bodhisattva. And there were two that were so close to each other that I don't really know the difference, but the tiniest little deeds like feeding a bird. And which one was the last one? 

[Lama Sarahni] Finally entered into the Mahayana. 

[Joana] Yeah, the path, it is the path everything we do.

[Lama Sarahni] Yeah. Finally enter into the Greater Way. Good. Good 

So the reason that that state of mind is so powerful. Because of those two, really lofty aspirations are in our mind as we're doing our deeds they get into the imprint. And that imprint grows. So that whole process is based on karma. Which we learned those principles of karma in the class before. Which basically means, what I see myself thinking doing saying towards others becomes the cause of what I'm going to experience in my world, others doing towards me. 

So if karma is true, then in order to experience this Bodhichitta experience we need to make the causes for it. We have to think, say, do something to plant the seeds that will grow into it. And technically, think, say, do stuff that will add to the seeds that we already have that are growing, that just were maybe not strong enough yet to have ripened. 

It's through our behavior changes that we make the seeds to ripen as this experience that we're cultivating by way of our intellectual understanding of its benefit. 

How do we do that? 

Like once we even get an, like I go through wish, longing, intention, determination—on purpose—once we even get the heartfelt wish that we can grow into a longing. And we're just thinking, Wow, I want Bodhichitta. Let alone Buddhahood. I just want Bodhichitta at this point. 

How do I get it? How do I do it?

How do I develop that mind part that's willing to do anything necessary to become the one who helps everyone get free of suffering. 

Everyone. Not just human. Not just those we love. Not just those we know. 

Every nag, every cockroach, every public enemy number one—whoever it is this decade—that whoever is your personal one you struggle with. We won't call it an enemy, but the one that pushes our button. 

Not leaving a single one out. 

How do we even, where do we even start? 

Buddha taught two methods. 

Two methods for developing the Bodhichitta that becomes the cause for our Buddhahood. Which is the cause for the end of suffering for all beings.

Geshela says it's difficult to get. But when you do, there'll be no question about it. 

We've heard him explain, right? Liquid light flows out of your chest and you're aware directly of the face of every existing being in the space of about 20 minutes. And you love them and you promise to save them. 

My literal mind tries to picture that and it like blows fuses and can't do it. But there's something about like what's inside that that's like I know. I know, but I know that there will be some similar experience and we'll know it. 

And then when we come out of it we've got the memory of it. But it's not like we can just sit down and go back into it, right? But it's done its thing. 

Similar to how seeing emptiness directly does its thing. 

Because of its impact on all the seeds in our mind when we have that experience. We need to plant the seeds for that experience to happen.

How do we do it? 

Lord Buddha gives us two methods. 

Two methods to develop Bodhichitta

-Dakshen nyam je

-gyun dre men ngak dun

1. DAKSHEN NYAM JE - Exchanging self and other

It's so interesting that in the Lamrim, Geshe Michael's been teaching Lam Rim for like 13 years, right? And he just made it to the section on DASHEN NYAM JE. 

And here we are learning it in ACI 1.

You guys are like advanced ACI 1. You kind of know what's coming. But it's pretty exquisite that they lay the whole thing on us before we really understand it's the whole thing. So that we can be have those little seeds planted. And they'll be growing. And by the time we get to the deeper instruction, which is course 11, those seeds have grown a bit. And then by the time we get to Jojong course 14, those seeds have grown even bigger. 

Like there's this built-in method to this whole system. It blows me away every time I get a glimpse of it and from a different perspective. 

And here's one of them. 

DAKSHEN NYAM JE 

DAK = me or I

SHEN = other

So me other, me other, me other.

NAM JE technically means equalize and exchange. 

Equalize and exchange self with others. They shorten it to call the practice exchanging self and other. Very, very superficially, it means first recognizing that everybody equally wants happiness and wants to be free from suffering. 

At a little deeper level, it's recognizing everybody equally is under the influence of their own karma and my karma in the sense of everybody I've perceived is equally coming from my seed. I think this equalizing self and others can go deeper, deeper, deeper. 

At the beginning level, just everybody's the same in the sense that they just want happiness. And everything they do is motivated by that wanting happiness and wanting to avoid suffering. It doesn't matter if it looks like what it looks like to us. That's what they want. Nat, bug, snake, lion, human, right? 

So once we see that and recognize, well, we all want the same thing. I'm trying to grow my Bodhichitta. How can I help him do it? 

And I don't really know exactly, because I don't know their mind. But I do know what upsets me, what helps me, so I have kind of an idea of what kinds of things I might try to help and to avoid harm. And my state of heart is growing this greater and greater concern for the impact I have on the other for their benefit above my immediate benefit. 

Technically, I'm doing that for my benefit. But my benefit aspiration is total Buddhahood, so that I can really help them. It's like this circular argument.

You really do start with knowing what you like, what you want, and use that as a kind of guideline at how you're going to help somebody else in the generalization, right? Maybe I like apricots, but you like almonds. OK, but the part is, it's pleasurable when somebody knows what you like and gets some for you. So in that way.

I know what it's like when somebody you know gives me a dirty look. So I'm not gonna do that for others. 

I know what it's like when somebody steps up to open the door for you when your hands are full. So I'll look for situations to try to do that.

Exchanging self and others is very basic level. It's being more aware of what it seems like people need and stepping in to help with this greater intention in mind so that someday I can help them in that deep and ultimate way. 

It grows into this is genuine recognition that my concern for others happiness really is the source of my own happiness. 

It doesn't always mean I get what I want in the moment. But it becomes very clear that that state of mind of concern for the other develops into situations where my needs, my wants get met without me even having to address them anymore. Because I've turned my interest over onto others so much. Those seeds ripening means I don't really have to even bother worrying about my own personal wants anymore. They just happen.

It would be cool to get to that point, wouldn't it? 

I think Geshe Michael demonstrates thatp retty well. From my perspective, he doesn't go out shopping, right? I mean, in the 12 years we were at Diamond Mountain, as far as I know Lama, Christie never had to go shopping. They just got taken care of. Yeah, they were the lamas, of course they got taken care of, but karmically speaking it's the result of something. And it had to have been the result of taking care of others in that sweet way. Which they were doing at Diamond Mountain. 

So really, our exchange is exchanging our concern for the other with our concern for ourselves. 

Which one is first? It starts with concern for ourselves. But then we say, OK, I'm gonna turn that on to others because that's how I really settle my concern for myself. You see it finally switched. So that's a beautiful practice.

The death meditation module goes into it in those three different levels that Geshe Michael spoke about in the Lam Rim as well, and Venerable Sumati is going to be teaching that module over a weekend. Teaching soon because he was asked specifically, people wanted it sooner than when it usually comes up. If you're inspired, reach out to him.

Got ahead of myself. 

So DAKSHEN NYAM JE is a really beautiful method. My personal favorite, actually. But it's not the one that Je Tsongkapa is talking about in his Three Principal Paths that he's teaching to that monk that went out into the boondocks, right? And is teaching people out there on his own. What do I teach? 

So Je Tsongkapa covered instructions and that guy was: I'll teach them the seven step cause and effect. 

2. GYUNDRE MEN NGAK DUN - 7 step method on cause and effect

DUN = 7, nuber 7

MEN NGAK = personal advice

GYUNDRE = cause effect

Seven personal advices on cause and effect. Meaning specifically the cause and effect for developing our Bodhichitta, which then makes our tiniest little deeds causes for our omniscience. 

The Gelukpa system loves lists and definitions. They're so precise in their use of language and they'll give us a list of seven things, of which there are 8. 

Or a list of three in which there's actually four, or the other way around, a list of four, but it looks like there's only three because two of them look the same. I don't know why that is. So here's one of them, the seven step cause and effect method. That has a preliminary, which is why it's not one of the seven, because it's a preliminary.

0. Preliminary: TONG NYOM - Equanimity 

Before starting our 7 step cause and effect method for growing our Bodhichitta, we need to first cultivate this equanimity.

The English word equanimity, my mind's reaction is: I need to get neutral towards everybody, like a robot. And that is not equanimity. 

It's not equanimity, just say thank you for feeding me moldy rotten food. Thank you for feeding me whatever, Strawberry Shortcake. Same reaction. 

Not that!

Equanimity means this concern for others happiness leaves not a single one out. Understanding the empty nature of all existence. And the cause and effect of our behavior. 

We understand that's true for everybody, and so we understand that everybody's suffering is really a big mistake. It's based on a misunderstanding of how we get the happiness we want and how we avoid the unhappiness we don't want. 

So we've all been doing the wrong thing to get the results we want, and it's no wonder the system's broken. It's no wonder the circle is the cycle of suffering.

Because we're just mistaken. And when we understand that clearly, we understand that it's true for all, the nat, the bug, the wealthiest Bill Gates, the ones that seem like they don't have a care in the world. They're losing it as they're gaining it. Right?

If they're ordinary beings the way they look to me. So we're cultivating this compassion really, for all equally. 

We're growing this love, wanting them to reach the happiness they really want, ultimate happiness, without leaving a single one out.

Do we have the same concern for the people we love as we do the mosquito. You don't know. We don't. It seems ridiculous to care about the mosquito as much as Ale cares about Jim. But what if we did? 

I couldn't move through my day if every mosquito, I needed to reach out to try and feed them. It seems ridiculous. But this state of mind of willingness to care about all beings in this highest, biggest way is contributing to our ability to grow this two phase biggest wish: I want my total enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. 

If we can direct some care and concern towards the tiniest one, do we really think we're going to be able to hold it towards even those we love the most. 

Because even they end up doing something that end up disappointing us, hurting our feelings, something.

So they say that if our wish for Buddhahood, for the sake of all sentient beings, leaves one out, it means our seeds are incomplete. And that means our Buddha paradise will be incomplete and that means it's not Buddha paradise.

So we are not omniscient until that wish includes all, not leaving a single one out. Well, how many are there? Yeah, a lot.

What about the ones I don't even know about, right? 

That's partly why we do those courses, is it 8 or 9 or something, where we learn about the hell realms and the hungry ghosts, and it's like: Don't believe these things really exist. Put it on the shelf just in case, right?

Here's a whole other realm of beings for our love and compassion to grow. We like reject it. But in fact it's like: Wow, if I didn't know about them, I would have left them out. Now I know about them and it actually gives me more clues about my own mental afflictions. It's helpful to even just pretend that they're real beings and real realities, because it gives us so much more opportunity to grow our Bodhichitta. 

So once we have this equanimity, technically they say, Don't move on to the seven step cause and effect until you have your Echo in the mini. And it's like, yeah, but if I wait until then, it'll be three lifetimes before I get to the seven step cause and effect. So, all right, I'll cook my equanimity and I'll crank up the juice and work on it in little ways, and while I'm working on it, would you please teach me about the seven steps so I can get started on that? And then of course they say, Of course. 

So here's the seven.

Overview Tibetan for the 7 steps

-Marshe

-Drin Dren

-Drin so

-Yrong Jampa

-Nying Je Chenpo

-Hlaksam Namdak

-Jang Sem

So these are growing in sort of sets. 

We work on these first 3 and they're kind of like dominoes. But then they all roll into one state of mind, and it awakens the YIONG JAMPA, which awakens the NYING JE CHENPO, and then those two are like another pair that work together. 

Then all of that together leads to the HLAKSAM NAMDAK. And then it's from this HLAKSAM NAMDAK that we realize, Darn, I've gotta become omniscient to be able to do it. And that's our JANG SEM. 

1. MAR-SHE - every being has been our mother before

Once we promise not to leave a single being out, we start with the instruction MARSHE, which is to train ourselves to recognize every one of those beings as our mother from before. 

The word just says, Recognize your mother. And it's like, Well, wait, I only have one mother in this life, right? She died 40 years ago. Yeah, maybe she's been through three lives—hopefully not—since then, but still, it was just one being.

So how can everybody be my mother? 

They say, We don't mean they're all your mother. We are saying that given the infinite lifetimes that your own mind has experienced, they say each one of those has had a mother, although that's not technically true. You're hell being You did not have a mother, hell being mother. You're hungry ghost You doesn't have a hungry ghost mother, father. But human and animal, those involve two other beings, something happening and providing us with this life. 

In those lifetimes the female of that, who is your mother, carried us, birthed us and cared for us enough to keep us alive. For however long we lived, in whatever lifetime we're talking about. And so just those factors, that she risked her life to bring us a life, a body, and then she attended to our needs. That's enough for us to say, Wow, she went to a lot of trouble for me in that lifetime. 

So the one aspect of this is: What's so important about mother? 

Why didn't we say father?

They were pretty important too. 

But there's that aspect of being in the womb and making our body out of her body, that is really the piece that makes moms powerful karmic objects. 

So really, the basis of this seven step cause and effect is because moms are such powerful karmic objects. 

Don't we wish we knew that when we were 13, 14, 15?

So it's kind of a sneaky little trick to get us to make the effort to recognize every being has in some lifetime been my mother. The being who they are now, they're not my mother. But the mindstream that's in them did have a lifetime, and in that lifetime it was my mother. Now that means I served them as their mother and their child and all those things too. But the focus on mother here has to do with this powerful karmic object and the recognition of the benefit that she did.

Thinking of others as our children, it's a different state of mind.

It doesn't so much bring up the: I wanna repay you.

It brings up that: I want to care for you.

Which is really nice. But there's something here in the 7th step cause and effect needs to have recognizin how they benefited us, and then wanting to repay.

It has to do with the power of them as a karmic object. 

Why not just see them all as our lama? Or see them all as the Angel. That's powerful karmic object too. This is our open teaching. So we stay within the open teaching, but you can see what it's planting seeds for. Geshe Michael can't help himself and now he's teaching creation stage everywhere. 

But you can see why. People‘s seeds have grown. Our seeds are pulling it out of him. I didn't teach this to the earlier class. And we just did the mother repay kindness, etcetera. 

But you guys know the punchline and so you shouldn't know the deeper why we're doing it. So, mother. 

Not: Maybe they were our mother here. 

Or: Once Upon a time.

They were my mother. 

This thing is my mother from before.

It's a very specific state of mind.

Then from that we think of that mom's kindness. Step two is the DRIN DREN. 

Yes Flavia. 

[Flavia] I was thinking, because we are awake in the middle of the night, I remember how it feels like trying to practice in the middle of the night, and it kind of goes a little against like the flow of thoughts. And so I was thinking about this being omniscient and thinking everyone as your mother. It is like, if every being comes from our mind somehow, it's like getting to see every being in the universe is like getting to see, or having awareness of every part of our mind. And like waking up in the middle of the night it goes, like we can see that we don't see our mind. Like we can see there is a part of us that we don't see. So I was thinking about that, about like, trying to think everyone as our mother, in a way of trying to see every corner of our mind. Because otherwise we cannot be enlightened. It's just going to be one part of us. It's going to be enlightened. It's going to be light only… I don't know, I was just thinking about that and I wanted to ask if there is a connection there.

[Lama Sarhani] There is a connection. And I can't describe it any better than you just did. And the all, this word all, is critical to what you were just saying. 

Our planting our seeds by using the term all beings. OK, all awareness, all, it's the seeds of that will grow into the experiences that we will have that will gain the realizations of our true natures, our Buddha nature. 

Versus one, other tradition says, oh, we're all one. And that isn't quite accurate. 

But we are all all. And that's what you're touching on.

[Luisa] What do you recommend people—because when you say the first step is to think everybody has been your mother, but what about you don't have a good experience with your mother? That‘s difficult. 

[Lama Sarahni] Don't have a good experience with your mother, right. That's difficult. So you know Buddhas time and much of what I understand about the Asian Culture is that the mother was held in this very, very high esteem regardless of your relationship with her. There was this cultural built in you honor the mother, the father. But the mother in particular. And we had to play by the rules right, regardless of our opinion of how good a mother she was. 

And then in our whatever our other culture is we grew away from that as our individualistic rate tendencies grew, and even our moms taught us: Grow up, go away. Make your own way. And with that came these greater and greater expectations from the child for what our relationship with parents should be. Culturally, karmically, we need to work out our issues. Many people don't have good relationships with moms, and this is a really hard practice for those folks. 

Maybe DAKSHEN NYAM JE is a better one to use.

The answer, though, that I've heard Geshe Michael give is this is not about whether or not you would like your mother. It's not about whether you agree with her, it's the very fact that she gave you life. For that we owe her big time.

All the rest for this practice doesn't really matter. 

But it does, because we can't make ourselves use the benefits that this mother did for us as the way to grow our reliance on everybody else as our mother. So to grow this, remembering her kindness if you have a mom who, the only kindness I found is she birthed me and kept me alive. You can then say, but my Aunt Mary. Or my neighbor down the street. Wow. That person was amazing. And they looked after me. That's what I would have expected from my mom, to recognize all the kinds of kindnesses that have been given to us. 

And so, if we need to approximate our ability to look for the kindnesses of mothers, we might have to switch mothers to look at kindnesses and be able to show the fact that our experience was that my mom didn't do those kinds of things. 

She still did provide the opportunity for you to learn to tie your shoes, and the opportunity to get educated and the opportunity to stay fed if we did. 

There are kindnesses of our moms that even mistreated us. But we're not going to grow our Bodhichitta by forcing ourselves to dig into all of that mess. 

So, however, we need to work with that for our future students as well—which maybe that's why there's two different methods for growing our Bodhichitta. 

2. DRIN-DREN - remember our mothers kindness

So, if we have a mother sense of: She did benefit me. 

The second step is to remember that kindness when we're recognizing, Oh, there's my mom from before. And when she was mom, when they were my mom, she cared for me. I don't remember that lifetime but she was mom. She gave me a life. She kept me alive. She fed me, whatever she did. 

It's a step in growing our Bodhichitta to force our minds to put that on them.

Put on that they're my mother. 

Put on that, they benefited me. 

So that we can grow this third step. 

3. DRIN-SO - repay our mothers kindness

DRIN SO. Which is I want to repay their kindness.

So these first three go together: Mom, their kindness, I want to repay it. 

Do we naturally want to repay people's kindness to us? 

Ale says no, Luisa says yes. 

Like I was taught to be polite. I guess it's part of being played. 

If somebody does something for you, do something for them. 

Take a little gift when you go visit somebody. 

They invite you to dinner, it's your turn to have them to dinner. 

Like that, it's something cultural. 

[Luisa] But not only that, I think if you see, like what you said before, it's when it's opening the door for you, the reaction that you're getting the moment is you wanna do something similar to the next person on the street.

So therefore I‘d say yes, you feel you wanna repay somehow the kindness that you got. 

[Lama Sarahni] Because it's pleasant. Right. It's pleasant to receive kindness. And so, if we understand intellectually, Wow, I received some kindness. I just burnt off a kindness seed. I need to plant new, right? Where can I plant new because I just burned one off? We can cultivate it like that. Or we can right grow it in this more natural sense, if you really did have a loving relationship with your mother and by thinking of this one as your mother, and it triggers this: Oh, you know, my mom really was amazing. She really was. And I never got the opportunity to really pay her back. I mean, I was a good kid. I paid her back in that way. But they didn't live long enough for me to get to take care of them. And I wanted to. I was looking forward to it. And so I didn't get to repay her kindness in that way. So if we have that kind of a sense, and we can really begin recognizing there's a lot of them, Ah, maybe I get to take care of them that I didn't get to do for her. Whatever, it's our practice to work with. We get the principle, and when we see what the sequence is happening, we'll see why running through these first three take some time until you see them as mom, recognize kindness, one every day. On all these different levels where this will happen. 

Then, once that it'll trigger something, we move to the next step, number 4, which is YIONG JAMPA. YIONG means lovely or pretty and JAMPA means love.

Before we do that, let's take our break. Take a break before YIONG JAMPA.

[break]

4. YI-ONG JAM-PA - pretty love

So 1, 2, 3 leads to the cultivation of step 4, which is YIONG JAMPA. 

JIONG JAMPA = pretty love, attractive love versus plain old love

But this is, Geshela described the idea of a mom who's at the park with her five year old. A 5 year old is playing with all the other kids. 

She hears all the kids playing. She has concern for the safety of all the kids, but she can hear her child's voice. 

Her concern is for her child, a little bit more right than all the others.

You mess with her child and boom. She'll be there.

You messed with the other kids and she'll be there too. 

But, that's the pretty love. It's this attraction that they're special. 

I love you all, but you're special. That kind of thing.

You weren't allowed to hear that. I was one of five and my parents were really good about treating us all equally. But curiously, at one point my parents were visiting us one weekend and they were getting ready to go home. And my mom turned to me and she said, We treated all you kids kids equally, but I just wanted to tell you, you were always my favorite. 

She had never said anything like that before, and I was astonished. And two weeks later, she was dead. So it's like, I am so glad she said that. That's that pretty love. 

5. NYING-JE CHEN-PO - great lord of hearts

It's way beyond pretty. Like, Oh, you're so special. Like that. 

For all beings not leaving a single one out. The Miskito: Oh (sighing). 

Can we really do that?

The wasp at the swimming pool: Oh. Oh. (sighing)

It's that idea, to love someone with that quality. 

Love meaning: I want your happiness. I want you to be happy.

It's the sense of, anything I could do, any kind of happiness, of course moral, not harming others, et cetera. There's all that thrown into the actual practice.

But the feeling from our side: anything I could do for you.

It seems not realistic. Yeah, maybe we can do that with one or two. 

But all? Come on. 

But imagine what it would be like. 

And imagine the seed planting that we would do if we just got an inkling of that.

I get the sense that when Geshe Michael is describing that heart opening feeling and seeing the face of everybody and loving them, I'm guessing it's like that.

It's like I'm gonna do it for you, bring you to that ultimate happiness, and that would be like part exploding.

They say we need an extraordinary level of love to be willing to even notice another suffering. I don't know that I completely agree with that, but I do recognize that I prefer to put blinders on when I see somebody suffering that I feel limited in being able to help them. Like homeless people are the ones, I just don't know how to interact. I don't know what to do for them. It's just like I'll try not to look. 

And I have to struggle against that and be willing to look up, look them in the eye and smile, even if I don't have the ability to stop and do something for them. 

So the willingness to recognize somebody with a need and to want to be able to somehow give to them, it takes this level of concern for their happiness. 

It does take love. 

But it hurts to love that much. 

For a human, anyway. Because we're incapable of really giving them something that would make them happy. Because there's nothing we can do for another that can really make them happy, is there? 

If what we do for them makes them happy, it's our seed seeing it that way, their seeds receiving it that way. But to try plants the seed that grows, to just try to the best of our ability to be kind. Even in a situation where everybody expects us to be nasty and we refuse. That's driven by love.

And love for ourselves falls into there because we do want our own happiness, we are allowed to want our own happiness.

Our wisdom is saying where it comes from is my concern for others happiness. 

And when we get a hold of that it's not their happiness versus my happiness. It's like this is where my happiness comes from. And I suspect we all have had that experience, that we're happiest when we're serving somebody. 

And then happiest, happiest when when we're serving somebody, they're happy about it. Which isn't always the case, of course. Because are we always happy about what somebody does for us? Oh, whoops.

So love wants to give love. Is this outflowing. And then compassion is this willingness to notice this suffering. Willingness to notice that they're not happy. 

Then we recognize, Well, as long as there's still suffering, whatever I do for them to bring them happiness, isn't able to penetrate through the suffering. 

Like if your child is sick with a fever. You don't bring them an ice cream cone.

It would have made them really, really happy if they felt good. 

But you instead need to help them feel better, get their fever down, find out why they're sick. 

Our love makes us willing to look more deeply at people's suffering and that grows our compassion that wants to help them and their suffering so that we really can help them be happy. Which may be just ending helping them end their suffering is the happiness that they're looking for. 

Love and compassion go together. 

Some say, well, if you don't love, you won't care enough to notice their suffering. 

Others say, yeah, but you have to notice their suffering in order to take it away before you can give them any happiness. 

So we love, we see the suffering, we act at the suffering level, and then we can act from the love level. But I don't think it's too different. Two different things, right? 

It is two different states of mind. But they are feeding each other to love someone, names we’re willing to recognize their distress. 

And obvious distress is one thing. 

The suffering of change is another. 

Then the pervasive Supreme is yet another. 

Lots of different ways that our compassion will show us, ways that they are unhappy, whether they even are aware of it or not. Levels at which we can help to relieve their suffering. 

What would we do may or may not work, just like with helping with happiness. 

But that willingness to try plants the seed that grows towards our ability to actually know exactly what they need to give up and take up.

So we're getting this inkling even at this level. It's like, I don't really know how to help. I'm opening my heart to want to. But I really can't do it yet.

When you combine step 1, 2 and 3: 

They're my mom. 

They really helped me. 

I want to repay them. 

And then love and compassion have grown. That leads to HLAKSAM NAMDAK which is personal responsibility.

6. HLAK-SAM NAM-DAK - personal responsibility

They're my mom from before.

[Luisa] Is not missing the other one that NYING-JE CHEN-PO?

[Lama Sarahni] Is the compassion. I just failed to say the Tibetan, thank you.

CHEN-PO = great

NYING-JE = Lord of Hearts

The great Lord of Hearts is how the Tibetans describe our word compassion.

Compassion meaning wanting others suffering to stop. That's the Lord of hearts. 

So that's telling us compassion isn't coming out of this heart chakra. 

Which means the knots around our heart chakras will block our compassion.

Our culture is mostly saying, oh, love comes out of the heart. 

This tradition kind of says that, but mostly compassion is at the heart. 

I maintain love comes out of the naval chakra, but we can debate that later.

So NYING JE CHENPO is the compassion. 

From those two comes HLAKSAM NAMDAK, step number six. 

HLAKSAM = extraordinary state of mind

NAMDAK = totally pure

So their totally pure extraordinary state of mind is: I've got to do it. Personal responsibility. It's this level: She was my mom. She is my mom from before. 

So, she is my personal responsibility to repay her kindness to me. I can't expect other people to repay her kindness to me. I need to do it. And the literature says, Look, if your this mom was falling into a bed of hot coals, you would just act to rescue her. You wouldn't stand around and go, Man, that lady needs help. You would act. 

So this all beings are my mother that I love and have compassion for, and they are stuffed in a steel cage of grasping self, self smothered in a pitch black ignorance. 

I need to help. 

Because I have some inkling about how that's all mistaken, and it really doesn't have to be. Maybe I really can help in some way? 

HLAKSAM NAMDAK, I will take responsibility to free them from self. Not leaving a single one out. They are my responsibility. 

Deeper, deeper they are my ripening seeds, so they are my responsibility.

But you don't say that to a brand new student. 

And you also don't really emphasize this personal responsibility. 

You talk about it and try to inspire a new student with it, but don't hang out there because it's too big, and it's a weight instead of an uplift.