← Lobsang Chokyi

Discovering Buddhism - Mind and Its Potential (29 September 2011)

Lobsang Chokyi · 29 September 2011 · 2 h 30 min · Tse Chen Ling via Internet Archive

Download audio

Automated transcript, estimated accuracy about 90% for this source; report an error.

Words the recogniser was unsure of are underlined with dots. Use “Report an error” beside any passage to tell us what the teacher actually says.

Key passages

The teacher's own words, quoted from the transcript below and chosen automatically as representative.

  • 6:02

    I want to start with a few moments of meditating on the breath so you can focus on the breath at a couple of different places, either at your belly as it inhales and exhales the breath, rises and falls, or at the tip of your nostril, sensation of the air entering and exiting your nostrils, or the sensation of the breath as it hits the top. You know, the skin just beneath your nose. So just pick one of those and focus on the breath for a few rounds of ten.

  • 8:02

    We've been working with our mind being pure and spacious and clear, unlimited, like the sky, like a clear sky. Whenever your mind gets worked up about something or upset you return to this visualization of the mind being pure and clear, spacious, fast.

  • 12:10

    Everything we know, and some of you may have heard this before because I used it on the peace day too. Everything we know, we know only because we have a mind. The senses receive the data and it moves through the consciousness. Without consciousness, even with sense stimuli, nothing would be registered. Then on top of this, we add our opinions, our ideas, etc., all constantly rushing around.

  • 20:33

    And so that's why it's really important for us to begin now to work with the mental afflictions as they arise. So then the next level is getting it that our minds create This thing called saṃsāra or cyclic existence. This condition that we find ourselves in where due to these delusions or mental afflictions our minds are disturbed.

  • 47:10

    The form realm is more subtle than the desire realm. The minds, you create the cause to be born in the form realm through really deep states of meditation, but without any kind of bodhicitta motivation. So you're not trying to stabilize your mind so that you can help other sentient beings not suffer. You're just doing it to experience deep states of bliss. And so when we do that, we create the cause to be born in this realm called the form realm. And the form bodies still exist in this realm, which is why it's called the form realm versus formless.

· · ·

3:41 Hey, come on in. Report an error

3:45 Yeah, perfect. Grab one of those ones with a book at it. I put a couple extra books out, but not that many. This sounds really loud to me. Put it over here. Report an error

3:58 So I can suddenly get really loud. Report an error

4:03 Seems a bit loud. Yeah, do you mind? Thank you. It might be frightening when I'm leading a meditation or something. Then you can watch your mind. Report an error

4:20 So we'll just start with a little quieting meditation just to get our minds calmed down and allow a few more people to find parking. As always. Yeah, I think so. Still seems a bit loud, but it's all right. It's much better. Report an error

4:46 So I have a voice again. Hopefully. Last night I was trying to lead the opening prayers and I had major coughing fits. You just never know. At least I have my cough dropped right here. Report an error

4:59 You can come on in. You can bring it in. Yeah, yeah. Report an error

5:07 So we're just going to start with a quieting meditation. So just kind of allow your minds and bodies to settle. If you need to roll your shoulders or stretch your neck from side to side and Report an error

5:28 take some nice deep belly breaths. Just let go of your day. Report an error

5:45 If you find that you're holding tension anywhere, you can breathe into it and release. Report an error

6:02 I want to start with a few moments of meditating on the breath so you can focus on the breath at a couple of different places, either at your belly as it inhales and exhales the breath, rises and falls, or at the tip of your nostril, sensation of the air entering and exiting your nostrils, Report an error

6:30 or the sensation of the breath as it hits the top. You know, the skin just beneath your nose. So just pick one of those and focus on the breath for a few rounds of ten. Report an error

6:47 And every time your mind starts to wander off, just place it right back on the breath. So just try to watch that your mind doesn't wander off. Report an error

6:58 And if it helps to count, that's fine, but you don't have to. Report an error

· · ·

7:52 And then as your mind sort of reaches neutral, just focus on this explanation that we've... We've been working with our mind being pure and spacious and clear, unlimited, Report an error

8:13 like the sky, like a clear sky. Report an error

8:35 Whenever your mind gets worked up about something or upset you return to this visualization of the mind being pure and clear, spacious, fast. Report an error

8:58 And then the second part of that definition is that it's knowing, it knows, it cognizes. And Report an error

9:09 so may whatever seeds are planted tonight through listening or contemplation or meditation, the mind, may they become the Report an error

9:24 direct cause for each of us being able to transform our minds completely into Buddha minds, fully awakened minds, fully enlightened minds for the benefit of every living being, Report an error

9:40 including ourselves. And Report an error

9:52 then as you're ready, we'll end the meditation and we'll... do the opening prayer, is in the white book in front of you. Report an error

10:06 With Report an error

10:15 the wish to free all beings, I shall always go for refuge to Buddha, Dharma and Saṅgha until I reach full enlightenment. Inspired by wisdom and compassion, today in the Buddha's presence, I generate the mind of full awakening for the benefit of all sentient beings. As long as space remains. As long as sentient beings remain, until then may I too remain and dispel the miseries of the world. Report an error

10:51 So I wanted to start with another great quote. These great quotes about the mind. A couple years ago, come on in, you guys came at perfect timing. Report an error

11:04 Hopefully you were motivating as you were circling repeatedly looking for parking. you, Parky. Report an error

11:11 There's an English nun by the name of Tenzin Palmo who is one of my heroes for sure. She was one of the first Westerners who was ordained, male or female, and she spent 13 years in solitary retreat. And then the last probably, I would say, seven or eight years, she's been, maybe longer, maybe ten years, she's been... Report an error

11:38 Traveling around the world, teaching and raising money for nunnery that she's forming for nuns. She's a Kagu nun. So she's forming a nunnery in upper, like really far northern India. But she's just an incredible speaker and incredible writer. In fact, I think we have her latest book, which is basically a compilation of a bunch of different talks that she's given. So she talked in Santa Cruz about meditation and she said this. Report an error

12:10 Everything we know, and some of you may have heard this before because I used it on the peace day too. Everything we know, we know only because we have a mind. The senses receive the data and it moves through the consciousness. Without consciousness, even with sense stimuli, nothing would be registered. Report an error

12:32 Then on top of this, we add our opinions, our ideas, etc., all constantly rushing around. Normally people aren't aware of how busy our minds are until we try to meditate. We actually think we are in control of our minds, but if we were, we could set our motivation to keep our minds calm, loving and peaceful all day, and so they would stay. Report an error

12:56 The fact that we don't manage to spend our whole day being loving and good-natured is because we are not in control of our minds. Instead, we have minds that go up and down depending on stimuli. We are the slave to our mind. We allow it to be in charge. The closest thing to us is our own mind, our mental states, and this isn't under our control. If we had a loudspeaker attached to our mind, wouldn't everyone want to learn to meditate? Report an error

13:31 We spend a lot of time on external appearances but little on internal reality. We can never escape our own mind. We must make the mind a place we can live in happily. Forget enlightenment. Is our mind what we want as our closest companion? Isn't that perfect? Report an error

13:52 My mind isn't necessarily what I want as my closest companion. I thought this was like the perfect synopsis of this course, why we absolutely have to know our own mind and why we have to learn to work with our own mind and to do our own mind and why it's urgent to do that. Even if it didn't affect anyone else, right? Even if we just have to live with ourselves. And, of course, then the next level is that then they do create a lot of problems for ourselves, our mind being what it is, and cause problems for other people. Report an error

14:31 So it just keeps sort of rippling out. More and more and more. And then the Buddha, of course, we have this element of the fact that the mind is beginningless and endless. So then it actually creates problems for us from life to life to life to life. So it definitely becomes a bigger and bigger and bigger problem if we really think about it in those terms. So I'm going to review a little bit from the last class, and then I'm going to open up for Q &A. Report an error

14:59 I thought it would be useful to just kind of go over some of the stuff that we talked about before we move into new material. So with our sense consciousnesses, we directly perceive whatever the data is without a layering of concepts, obviously, because conception comes from mental consciousness. But it's the very next moment that the mental consciousness kicks in, adding all these different concepts. Report an error

15:29 Some based on our karma and a lot of it just based on conditions in the moment or habits. Different things cause different ways that we think. So we end up experiencing our life not directly but through all these different concepts and we don't realize it. We think we're actually just seeing or hearing or touching or tasting something directly and that anyone in the world would see it or hear it. Report an error

16:00 Taste it or touch it directly exactly the same way. We have no idea how much our mind layers and layers and layers and layers of different thoughts and conceptions layer our reality. Report an error

16:14 So most of our experience comes through presumption, which is like sort of guessing based on past experience. I get up in the morning and I presume the day is going to be exactly the same as yesterday because... I'm in it. There's no valid reality, right? There's no valid logic. It's just, oh, that's why it seems especially dark. Report an error

16:40 Could you hit that, Theo, could you hit that middle button there? Report an error

16:48 Yeah, there we go. It's like, whoa, I know it's getting darker again. It's turning into fall, but still. Yeah, so we experience a lot of our reality through this presumption. Report an error

17:02 Which is sometimes great, right? Like where there's smoke, there's fire, like that, you know? But sometimes it's just basing it on past experience. I got up yesterday and I had this kind of a day, so I got up today and I'm going to have this kind of day again, right? Which obviously we know by now isn't the case, sometimes for the good and sometimes for the bad. Report an error

17:27 but analytics. Analytical meditation, like the ones that you're working on, on anger, for example, is designed to take us out of this kind of presumptive state of mind and into some sort of direct reality, some sort of gut level experience of whatever it is that we're meditating on. For example, when we're meditating on impermanence, we can understand impermanence. And I think most of us, to some degree, have some understanding of impermanence. Report an error

17:55 That one's not even really Buddhist. What's Buddhist about it is like trying to really get it because we're usually in denial about impermanence, about especially our own impermanence. But we have to really meditate on something again and again and again in order to shift our mind, to shift from, as Tenzin Chokyi always says, from the head to below the neck, to get it on the gut level, to directly experience it. Report an error

18:23 And they use the... The metaphor of how I could explain in a billion different ways what sugar tastes like. But unless you taste sugar, you're never going to really get it. Like you might take copious notes on what sugar tastes like, but unless you actually just finally have the experience, then it moves from the brain to below the neck. Report an error

18:48 And that's the way we actually use our mind to go from an intellectual understanding to a... To getting something at a gut level. They actually say the stronger our concentration gets, we can get deeper and deeper and deeper into what they call meditative equipoise, which is basically just really deep absorbing meditation. Report an error

19:14 We actually develop what's called yogic direct perception and we can actually see With this level of concentration, it's a type of clairvoyance, but we can actually see the atoms in an object. We can actually see to the level of what we go down to a subtler level of reality than we can see with our eyes right now. Report an error

19:39 So normally we just see things at a very gross level of reality. But once we have this very strong, stable mind, we can actually go down. Into the next level beneath the surface. And we can see them actually coming into abiding and going out of being too. So it's not even like we just see the structure. Report an error

20:00 It's almost like we have a microscope. Report an error

20:06 But for now, our mind is overlaid with all these different mental afflictions, including doubt and anger and depression and things like that. Report an error

20:20 They're called obstructions or obstacles because they obstruct us from being able to do anything really with our minds. It really holds us back to have all these different afflicted states of mind. And so that's why it's really important for us to begin now to work with the mental afflictions as they arise. Report an error

20:43 So then the next level is getting it that our minds create This thing called saṃsāra or cyclic existence. This condition that we find ourselves in where due to these delusions or mental afflictions our minds are disturbed. So first there's that. Our minds are disturbed. Even in a tiny way our minds are disturbed. Because that's the barest definition of a mental affliction. Report an error

21:16 But then it causes us to act or speak with... Afflictions too. And that creates karma. And that karma then is carried by our mind streams until conditions come together and that karma ripens. And if it's negative karma, then it ripens as our suffering. And if it's positive karma, then it ripens as our happiness. So it behooves us to understand how those mental afflictions get to our happiness and our suffering. Report an error

21:47 So we have to see that connection. It helps us then to determine to not do those actions that cause us to suffer. First we're just focusing on ourselves because we're trying to understand this sort of puzzle that the Buddha laid out that leads to our own happiness first because then we can help other people. Report an error

22:11 It's sort of like the thing about putting the oxygen mask on your own face before you try to help the kid next to you. Report an error

22:21 So at this point, because we don't have any control over our own minds, because we haven't subdued our own minds, we don't have any control where we take our next rebirth. Report an error

22:33 Because at the moment of our death, if our mind is completely unsubdued and uncontrolled, it's just based on that. It's based according to what kind of a life we've led overall, but it's also based on the state of our mind at that moment of death. And at this point... Especially, I mean, if we even just think about for three minutes or even two minutes, probably only a minute and a half that we tried to watch our breath at the beginning of class, I don't know how successful people were, but you can really see that it's hard to keep your mind on an object, even a boring old thing like the breath, you know, not necessarily even a really virtuous object or anything like that. Report an error

23:19 At the moment of our death, due to whatever state of mind we are experiencing and due to an accumulation of whatever karma we've done through the course of that life, our mind is thrust, you know, it's thrown into our next rebirth. Report an error

23:37 And that karma that we carry determines our whole experience of that rebirth. Everything from the potencies to have... Those states of mind again. So like if we have a tendency towards anger and we don't do anything about it in this life, we'll carry that tendency in our next life. You know how if you ever watched little kids, you know, you can see like some little kids just come into the world angry. Report an error

24:05 Some little kids come into the world very, very sweet and compassionate. Sometimes sisters and brother, like the same sort of physical. Report an error

24:15 Conditions for growing up and one kid is totally different than the other. Or then you hear about these little kids like Jeffrey Dahmer or something who started out torturing cats and stuff. It's just carried in the mind stream. So it's not always the mother's fault. Sometimes in the news everyone goes to the parents and blames the parents for the way their kids turn out. Report an error

24:34 Obviously some of it could be their fault. But according to the Buddha, we come into this life with a lot of... Habits and tendencies towards certain states of mind that we've just carried with us because we never did anything with those states of mind in the last life. Sometimes for the good, right? Report an error

24:50 We come into this life with this mind that really likes to analyze things or that's really interested in the Dharma from a very early age or that's really kind, just sort of naturally kind or that likes to save money or, you know, just has those really nice positive qualities and sometimes it's like, you know, the opposite. Report an error

25:09 They're prone towards depression or prone towards jealousy or something like that. Report an error

25:19 Oh, somebody's buzzing. So all of it, it's the same as if you can really see how in this life, Vena Rubina always used to say, if we practice the piano in this life, we wouldn't be at all surprised if we could play the piano. It wouldn't surprise us if we could then see a result of that practice. And it's the same. If we practice the positive qualities and practice even restraining from the negative qualities, we see a result eventually, and it shouldn't surprise us. Report an error

25:52 And the same way if we practice the negative, then we're just creating more and more causes for the negative to arise. So if we keep... Just giving in to, blindly giving in to anger, things like that. Then we're just creating more causes for that to keep arising in our mind. That's another selling point for working with the mind. Report an error

26:11 If you think about, like if you find yourself really caught up in a klesha attack, and you're just kind of going crazy about something, you're really upset, and you just think, wow, I'm just creating the causes for more of this. Sometimes that's like enough for me to go, woo! You know, it's kind of like that hot coal analogy that the Buddha gave. It's like, just drop it. Report an error

26:31 I just want to drop it right then. And sometimes it's like because of habit you don't want to drop it. And then you just have to catch it that it's only a habit and you've got to drop it. Back away from it. Back away from it. Report an error

26:51 The good thing to know about karma, and I always like to underscore this because I think there's a misunderstanding in the West, and maybe it's other traditions, views of karma that have gotten all mixed up by the time it reached us, but karma isn't the same as destiny or fate. I was just watching a movie and they used it exactly the same way, and I'm like, no, no, no. Karma is completely impermanent. Karma is changeable. Report an error

27:15 Karma is purifiable, if that's a word. karma does Does create conditions and we create the karma, but karma does create the conditions for us to have happiness or unhappiness, but underlining we create that karma and we can uncreate, in other words we can diffuse that karma, we can learn different practices that short circuit that karma. Report an error

27:43 So karma is completely changeable in a way that fate and destiny isn't. So sometimes you hear people saying, well, that's just her karma. Report an error

27:53 It's sort of like letting go of compassion. If somebody's suffering, yes, it may be caused by their karma, but... It's up to us, especially as baby bodhisattvas and baby Buddhists, to be compassionate if somebody's suffering, not to just be like, well, it's your karma. I think sometimes the teachings on karma just become like one more reason for us to be Mr. Report an error

28:15 Know-it-all or something. I don't know. And what we're trying to do is become Mr. Kindness. We're trying to be Ms. Kindness. We're trying to be kind when people suffer. That happens a lot in purification retreats like Vajrasapha retreat. Which is this deity or this Buddha right above Theo's head. Report an error

28:38 So there's a certain practice that we do where we can purify eons and eons and negative karma using Vajrasapha. And traditionally if you're doing a lot of Vajrasapha practice it's done in a three month retreat. You can imagine the fun that ensues. It's a hard retreat to do. It was hard for me anyway. It was definitely a lot of physical purification. Report an error

29:02 You're just like, you're going through so much stuff. And it's sort of like, if people are kind to each other, it definitely works. But if people aren't, they're just like, wow, here come on, I'm happy for you. And you're just like, you know. I had almost a solid migraine the entire three months. It was so horrible. Report an error

29:22 But I was happy. I was purifying. But that's for me to do. That's for me to get to the point where I'm going, yeah, that's really great. I did purify a lot, and that was great. And it might be for like one specific friend to be like, hey, but you know, you could see that this is, you know. But for everybody to be like, oh, that's great, you know. Report an error

29:41 And you're just like, but it hurts. So. We just don't want to use our understanding or limited understanding of karma to make people feel bad or not remember to be kind. Report an error

29:55 Don't ever forget that part. That's a big part of the Buddhist teachings too. Karma is really important but so is compassion. Karma is definitely not set in that way. It's not like destiny and it's not like fate and you're not stuck with it forever. Report an error

30:15 And in fact, tonight we're going to talk about the different realms of saṃsāra. And it's really important to keep remembering this because it's not like, for example, the Christian idea of heaven and hell because they aren't permanent. Nothing's permanent. Report an error

30:36 And none of these realms that I'm going to mention are permanent. And then when we get into the teachings on emptiness, even just a little bit, we have to remember that these experiences don't exist in any kind of solid, heavy, from their own side way. And then it gets even more kind of like light. It becomes more like an experience. Report an error

31:02 So, Anyway, so why don't we check in here, because I want to know if anybody did any work with the anger, either on the cushion or off the cushion, and I also have a story about it. But I just kind of want to know how it went this week with the meditation, if you can come up. And I don't know where the... Report an error

31:25 Oh, you have the mic? Okay, good. Anybody want to start? Oh, good. That's why you have the... That's why you have the mic. Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You guys are just going to have a whole book of quotes. I know, I think that one's just really great. Report an error

31:49 No, that was it. Okay, Jenna, yeah, yeah. Report an error

31:57 Oh, you have to do, you just hold it down for a minute and then give it a second and it'll come off. Yeah, start again. Yeah. Is Report an error

32:11 that on? Does that sound like, just tap it. Push it, like, hold it. Okay, then stop. Tap it on top. No. A V-Man, oh, A V-Man. Report an error

32:28 Oh, you didn't turn the... Oh, that's... You can push it all you want. That sounded good. Okay, now you're going to push it. Okay. I think it started to. Tap it again. Yeah, there it goes. Testing. Oh, yeah. Thank you. Hello? No, just kind of hold it away. Well, I've been working with the meditation on anger, and I had a good opportunity this week to apply what I've been working with on the map. Report an error

33:03 A friend of mine actually sent me a Buddha statue, and I have been waiting with UPS to get it, and I was supposed to get it last Friday. Oh, UPS, this is a great opportunity to work with your mind. Yeah, exactly. There are little baby buddies in their shorts, I just know it. Report an error

33:27 So the package was supposed to be her last Friday, and my friend's like, did you get your package? I'm like... No, no, no. Okay, okay. It'll be there Monday. So it's supposed to come Monday. And then he starts freaking out Monday. I'm like, no, don't worry. It's okay. Like, it'll be here. It'll come. And then it's supposed to be here Tuesday. Then it was supposed to be here Wednesday. So then I'm starting to get a little frustrated. In the meantime, I'm dealing with my friend who has way less patience than I do. Report an error

33:57 At least at this point. And working with, not the UPS, but the sender. And they're promising me, assuring me that it's going to be here. And we're saying, leave it with the building manager, do this and do that. And finally this morning, I got two messages while I was in class. One saying, it's going to be there, it's going to be there. Then 15 minutes later, they're like, oh, we can't get into the building. We don't know the building manager's number. And my building manager, it says there's a... Report an error

34:27 Where to press. It's very clear. You have to really not be paying attention. And so I just really started getting upset with this. And then I called UPS. And they didn't leave me any number to reference, no tracking number, nothing. And I just said, you know, I was called, left a message saying, please, you know, tell us how to get into your building. Report an error

34:46 Well, UPS couldn't locate me. They had no reference of my phone number, my address, nothing, the sender. So I was just like, what do I do? I'm like, I just need to breathe. I kind of went back to the meditation and just calmed down. I caught myself. I thought to myself, if I wasn't practicing right now, I would be fuming. Report an error

35:08 I would be a very unpleasant person to deal with. So I was able to catch the anger and just say, hey, you know what, the package will get here. And the person was completely unhelpful. And I just said, you know what, I don't think you're going to be able to help me. Thank you. I'm going to try and get a hold of somebody who can. Report an error

35:25 So I went, you know, called another person and it was really cool. And then today at the end of the day, I like totally stalked UPS because I know where they hang out, got my package. That's great. So that's my experience. That's great. Yeah, no, it's like that. And it shows you, the fact that we notice it shows you how many times we probably haven't noticed it, that we've just kind of gone ballistic and done, you know, like days on the UPS and, you know. Report an error

35:53 Yeah. Mowed them all down and everything else. And it wasn't his fault. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Who knows whose fault it was. Literally the messenger, right? Yeah. Anybody else have an anger management story? Report an error

36:11 Okay, Winnie. Report an error

36:16 Thank you, Steve. Well, I'm put to the test every day. I have a 13-year-old and a 16-year-old. And I'm probably put to the test like 20 times a day. And I haven't had a lot of time to be practicing the meditation because I'm a single mom. But every morning when I wake up now, I do that little chant, I will not get angry today. Report an error

36:39 I will not get angry today. And I just, I say it as I brush my teeth, as I'm making breakfast, I just say it over and over. And it really is working. It's not perfect. I blow it a lot. But I would say that... If you said it was perfect, I think we'd all be like, oh my God, really? It's just slowly decreasing. I just really look forward to the day when it is gone. Report an error

37:06 And I think just knowing that it's not permanent, that in itself is huge. Because for so long you just think, that's who I am. That's right. Yeah, yeah. You know, and... Report an error

37:22 It's like an armor or something that you wear. You don't realize that you can actually take it off. And this whole idea of nothing is permanent is just so wonderful. Report an error

37:35 And that's what that breathing, counting from 1 to 10, often will allow a little of the steam to sort of evaporate and kind of calm us down. And can I add that I've been using a little bit on my girls because the other day my... My daughter said something about, oh I'm so terrible, I'm so bad, you know, I did this and I did that. And I said, well you did that two days ago, you're no longer that person. Report an error

38:00 And it was... It was very liberating for her, although I don't know if she believed it. That's right, yeah, but she has more of a chance of believing it now until she's hardened it into who she is and how she sees herself. If we could just get this into kids' heads when they're little. No, but if I'd had this when I was a kid, oh my God, what a different person I'd be now. Report an error

38:23 Absolutely, yeah, because it hardens. It hardens over time, and then we really believe it's who I am. Well, I'll tell you my anger story. So I think it was Tuesday, I guess it was. Tuesday or Wednesday? Tuesday. It must have been Tuesday. Okay. So Tuesday I set, okay, the mic I think might be headed this way. Yeah. Or just turn it the other way. Report an error

38:51 Yeah, because otherwise it'll whistle. So Tuesday I started out and I thought, okay, I'm supposed to be like setting the resolution that I'm not going to get angry. I'm going to set the resolution that I'm not going to get angry no matter what happens today. And I'm going to keep it no matter what happens. I thought, oh, God, this is so scary, but I'm going to do it. Because if I can't do it, then how can I possibly be teaching this class? Report an error

39:13 So then I went off to work. I work outside. I do bookkeeping in a tax preparation office. And so most of the day, I'm just kind of working and working and working. And so then in the afternoon, I had to work with this. Report an error

39:28 For those of you who know anything about taxes, we're hitting the final deadline of the year. We have the biggest procrastinators. Those are the people that we're working with now. Or as subtly called, the messes. We have all the messes. So I was working with this particular mess who I have been working with for a while and trading emails with this person and, you know, you finally get what you, it's like pulling teeth, you know, you just, just give me this, you know, you get that and then you put it all in and then there's another email the next day that's like, now I want to change these numbers, you know, so you're like, okay, put in the new data. Report an error

40:05 Oh, I found this and this makes it all different or, you know, whatever, so. So I was kind of getting, you know, more and more feeling like I, you know, like on the start to the upsetness. And then my boss left and I thought, you know, I'm actually going to just call her because email can also cause this kind of problem, right? Report an error

40:26 That sort of back and forth thing. So I just called her and I thought, you know, she's obviously not very happy. She's having a lot. She's disorganized. Things are not going according to her. best interest either. This is all And so I just had a really nice conversation with her, and I was just kind of like talking her through the process. Report an error

40:49 And I sort of began to see her more as a person, you know, instead of just the mess at the other end of the email. And so that was kind of cool, and I was like, okay, that's good. So we managed to get her to a certain place, and I think we actually managed to get her to only one more thing needed, and I was able to settle that the next day. Report an error

41:08 So then I decided to leave a little bit early. I left at like 5. Well, this was the day that the Haight Street fire happened. So I got a ride to the bus stop at 5 o 'clock, and the person at the bus stop said, That's really weird. The next bus isn't due for 45 minutes. I thought, that's bizarre. Okay. I'll go into Whole Foods and just get a little, you know, shop a little bit until the next bus comes. Report an error

41:38 I was just like, you know, I'm not going to, you're just going to get, this is not going to phase me. So I went in and I, you know, came back out again and waited and waited and waited. And none of us really had any idea. We were just, you know, more of us were waiting. And of course, some people were like, you know, I'm like, Yeah, you know. I'm not going to get mad though. So then we're just waiting and waiting and waiting. And then finally, you know, it's one of those things where there's three buses coming our direction. Report an error

42:07 The first two just beep and wave, you know. And of course, that one woman who was just getting angry and angry. And I'm like, uh-huh. Here comes one now. So then we all got into this bus and this guy and the driver was obviously deflecting. He's like, there's a fire in the hate. There's a fire in the hate. That was all he said, though. He didn't really say, I guess, you know, they probably don't want to say too much in case it's one of our homes, right? Report an error

42:34 Because, I mean, those poor people, half of them probably were at work, so they didn't know. So we all got on the bus. And it had already been an hour since I had first come to the bus stop, so it was already an hour later. So then we got on the bus, and we're like riding along, and we get to Church Street, this is the 22, and instead of turning right, suddenly it turned left and didn't stop. Report an error

42:57 It just kept going into the Castro, and we're like... By this time, of course, then people were getting on and they had heard, and so they were saying, yeah, there's this really big fire in the hay, and I'm sure they're, you know, detouring the bus, but it was just kind of getting a little more wacky. Report an error

43:12 It was like going through the Castro, which isn't even part of it, and then you're going up Divisadero, and I'm thinking, I wonder if I'm going to go anywhere near my house, or if I should just get, and of course, if I had walked home, I would have been home, like, within the first hour, you know, but of course, I just didn't know. Report an error

43:29 And I just refused to get angry. I was just like, okay, you know. And so then you pull in. I got off at Haight Street because I figured that was safe. Walked down Page Street. And right as I got to our neighborhood, there was just like probably maybe eight different fire engines on Page Street. And the Haight Street buses were going down Page Street. You know, everything was off Haight Street. So it was obvious what it was. And then I just sort of thought, wow, you know. Report an error

43:58 My home could have been destroyed. There was no reason for me to get pissed off at the bus stop, which I hadn't gotten pissed off, but only because of this assignment. Because it gave me a reason. I was like, absolutely, yeah. And it's like you just had to keep reminding yourself that I will not get angry, I will not get angry. Report an error

44:16 It was just like, okay, I will not get angry. And it was a very, it was such a useful thing. And you just realize, wow. So ever since, every day now I'm doing the same thing. I'm just like, I will not get angry today no matter what happens. And if you catch the mind starting to go towards that upset, it's like, no, I will not get angry today. Report an error

44:33 No, I won't. So it's quite, it's very useful. I think that's mindfulness. I think that's what mindfulness is, is that reminding. Constantly reminding. That's developing. And our minds don't naturally have mindfulness. It's like any other quality, we have to develop it. And it just comes from practice, like playing the piano. I wanted to share that because it took me two hours to get home. Fortunately, it wasn't a class that night. Report an error

45:01 I was thinking that too. I was like, wow, I'm glad this wasn't Thursday night. And I'm glad it wasn't for Geshla's class either. It would have been an hour late. Anyway, any other anger stories? Before we talk about what anger creates. Okay, so then if, you know, up until this point, according to the Buddha, just because of ignorance, we just keep following these, our karma and our kleshas, blindly we just keep following them. Report an error

45:27 So, because we're ignorant, and that ignorance then produces these different realms of existence. So, the Buddha taught that there are three... realms of samsaric mind. The three realms are desire realm, form realm, and formless realm. Report an error

46:01 And we're in the desire realm. We're in the non-desire realm. realm, the desire room. Report an error

46:09 Desire realm, form realm and formless realm. Report an error

46:16 And they call this realm the desire realm because it's permeated with desire. Usually really gross desire in the form of desire for food or for sex. That's big time in our realm. Might sound familiar if you've watched TV recently and looked at any kind of commercials or anything. Or billboards when you're driving. Report an error

46:40 And so we're going to talk about... The desire realm in a minute because it's made up of six sub realms. But the form realm is a more subtle realm. I'm going to suck on this even though it's annoying. Report an error

46:59 I start sounding more and more like my grandmother. It's like that's my sign that the voice is starting to go again. It's becoming more like grandma. Report an error

47:10 The form realm is more subtle than the desire realm. The minds, you create the cause to be born in the form realm through really deep states of meditation, but without any kind of bodhicitta motivation. So you're not trying to stabilize your mind so that you can help other sentient beings not suffer. You're just doing it to experience deep states of bliss. Report an error

47:36 And so when we do that, we create the cause to be born in this realm called the form realm. And the form bodies still exist in this realm, which is why it's called the form realm versus formless. But they're much more subtle. There's very little obvious suffering. But the minds still contain ignorance. Report an error

47:58 And the minds and karma, we're still subject to karma. So it doesn't last. Right? It's still impermanent. All of these are impermanent realms. We create causes to be born in them. Then the karma wears out. And in this case, when the karma wears out, it's sort of like we just use up all our good karma. And then we take the next rebirth, which is going to be a more negative rebirth. Report an error

48:26 So we have this very nice blissful state of, it's basically like a huge, a long, long, long meditation session for eons. So you aren't creating any more negative karma, that's the good news. This kind of rebirth, you aren't creating any more negative karma because you can't, you're in meditation, right? Report an error

48:46 So you're not yelling at anyone, you're not punching anybody, you're not stealing anything, like in the desire realm. But you haven't done anything about those states of mind. You haven't actively tried to work with your anger or anything like that. And so at the end of that experience or at the end of that, when that karma ends for having a form realm rebirth, then it's just a waste of that positive karma. Report an error

49:15 And you just drop down to a lower realm rebirth. The formless realm is very much the same. It's even subtler. There's not even a body. There's just minds. And the minds are also very absorbed in this particular kind of concentration. Report an error

49:35 But they still have subtle mental afflictions. So you can still crave, for example, you can still crave the blissful feeling of really strong meditation or something like that. It wouldn't be as gross as the desire realm. But you're still subject to mental affliction and you're still subject to karma. So when the karma wears out, it's sort of like when the gas runs out in the tank, it stops the same. Report an error

50:04 When the karma is gone for this particular rebirth, then that being dies and then is reborn into the next rebirth. But they've used up a lot of good karma in this. So these are, as far as experience, Report an error

50:20 Form and formless realms are better experiences than the desire realm, but you're wasting a lot of good karma in those realms. So then in the desire realm, there are six different sub-realms that make it up. The human realm is one of them. Now, even within the human realm, there's different kinds of human rebirth, right? If we just walk down the street, we can see different types of humans. So we are going to talk in the second part of the class about what's called a precious human rebirth, which is a particular kind of rebirth that allows us to practice spiritual path. Report an error

50:58 Not all humans have it, right? All we have to do is watch the news, and we know that not all humans have it. but to be human in general considered a pretty good A rebirth in general because we suffer and we have happiness so we can study and practice the Dharma and it makes sense. If we just have happiness, which we'll talk about with the next two realms, it's hard to ever want to study and practice the Dharma. Report an error

51:31 Like we're having too much fun. Report an error

51:35 I always compare it to the sort of grade A and grade B starlets in Hollywood. There are too many parties. There's too many beautiful people. There's too much fun. There's too much drugs. So it's hard to go, oh, I've got to go to my Dharma class now. I mean, it's hard enough as a human, right? Report an error

51:55 And as a human, if we have even just a little bit of suffering, that suffering actually, as much as it's not necessarily something great to go through, it can teach us, right? We can learn things from our pain and from our suffering. It's not without, it's not wasted. And that's why they say that it's actually a good rebirth to have a human rebirth and better to have a precious human rebirth. Report an error

52:21 And we'll talk about that in a minute. There are causes for a human rebirth, just like with everything else, right? If everything is created by karma, nothing is random. According to the Buddha's teachings, nothing is random. We can't just assume there is some, I think, kind of a new age thought out there. Report an error

52:44 My parents used to have it, too. Report an error

52:49 Bless their hearts and rest their souls. That – I know. Report an error

52:54 I think it was something going around in the 70s. There's this idea that we're constantly evolving so that no matter what we personally do, that with every life we're getting better and better. According to the Buddha, that isn't true unless we're actually intending to and we're doing something about our minds and our lives. Otherwise, we are just using up... Report an error

53:18 Karma, good and bad, and creating more karma, good and bad, and then the next life we're using up karma, good and bad, and creating. And so they're kind of mixed. All of our lives are a little bit mixed, unless we're really horrible, in which case we have pretty bad lives after that, or we're really wonderful and then we have pretty good lives. Report an error

53:35 But otherwise, without much understanding, we're just sort of creating lots of both and experiencing lots of both. And so we keep doing that. So we're kind of going like this. Unless we make some sort of effort in this life. To start turning things around so that we never have to go into a suffering life again. Hopefully not just so that we won't have to go into a suffering life, but that we can actually do something with the rest of our lives and help others. Report an error

54:05 It's not just for ourselves. Okay, so that's the human realm. Then there are these Asuras. They say Asuras and Suras. A-S-U-R-A-S. Sometimes called demigods, which always makes me think demitassa, but I can see where it comes from. Demigods and gods are the next two almost gods. These are the grade B starlets, right? They haven't actually made it into a feature film, but they've been on maybe an infomercial or something like that. Report an error

54:39 So you have this incredible, you have... Beauty, you know, everyone around you is beautiful. All the environments are beautiful. You know, you have long lives, much longer than human lives. Report an error

54:56 You have a lot of pleasure, a lot of parties and so forth. But the demigods especially are plagued with jealousy of the gods. Right. Just like the grade B starlets. So they're looking over and they're like, man, I never make it into a movie like that. So they're always fighting. And so they waste this great conditions that they have by never being satisfied and always wanting more. And so there's all these stories about, you know, they spend all this and they never win the fights. Report an error

55:26 Right. Because they aren't the gods. So it's almost like it's stacked against them. They're fighting all the time with these other beings who have more happiness and more beauty and more pleasure than they do. But they have plenty. They just can never see that they have plenty. So the gods have this blissful existence for many eons, and they are physically gorgeous. Report an error

55:52 And they win all those battles. So it's just this incredibly happy existence until they say they actually enter their active dying process and they realize that they've just wasted so much time by just partying basically. Partying and having whatever they wanted and just using up their good karma. So very much like the form realm and the formless realm, the gods and demigods are just wasting all of their positive karma and then when it's done, what's next to ripen is, what's only left is negative karma. Report an error

56:36 So then it's a lower realm rebirth. And they say the suffering of a god in their active dying phase is one of the worst sufferings of saṃsāra because they have this... Very strong recognition of this wasting, what they've wasted. Like all the other gods move away from them. They don't like the way they smell. Report an error

56:58 They can see. Apparently their death is obvious on them. Suddenly they go from being really beautiful to being really ugly. And so they're completely alone and they know. Apparently they get some sort of an image of what their next rebirth is. And it's always a lower rebirth. The gods is the highest in the desire realm. So they say that that amount of suffering is one of the worst in saṃsāra because it's very strong mental suffering. Report an error

57:26 Okay, so those three are what are called the fortunate realms of the desire realm. Because no matter how bad a human realm is, that's not entirely true, but for the most part, it still counts as a positive existence. Only because things can shift, especially because karma does change. So we do hear about stories, for example, of really horrible situations and then somebody gets out and manages to suddenly end up at Oxford or something. Report an error

57:57 Like some little child soldier or something gets out of wherever and is able to become a doctor and help his people or something. So there is some way as a human that you can still... That karma can shift and your life can still become positive even if it starts out negative and so forth. So the next three realms are called the unfortunate realms only because the suffering is greater. Report an error

58:24 That's really all that that title is based on. And the suffering is greater only because the karmic obscurations are greater. The karma is worse in these cases. So it's animals. Report an error

58:40 And animals in this case also includes insects. They include insects as part of animal realm. Spirits, sometimes called hungry ghosts, predates, Report an error

58:55 and the hell realms. So animals, oh, did I? So the animals, the mind of an animal, of any animal, even of any insect, according to the Buddha, is exactly like our mind. Just more obscured. That's it. For that particular lifetime, their minds are more obscured by karmic obscurations. But they still have Buddha nature. Report an error

59:26 They are not permanently an animal. Even our Bodhi. Which is why we always try to, as Buddhists, we always try to give really good imprints to if we have pets and so forth. So that in their next life they can have a human rebirth. Not because humans are so great. It's not like from that standpoint of we are the stewards of the earth, which is more of a Christian thing. Report an error

59:52 It's so that the next life they would have a chance to actually study and practice on their own. As it is, as many times as I repeat mantras for Bodhi, her mouth can't say them. She can't herself pick up the book and study it. She can't attend class, although she's tried many times. But usually she does the talking, unfortunately, so that's why we keep her upstairs. So it's not, you know, a lot of times when we teach about these realms, people get upset and they're like, no, animals are great and all that. Report an error

1:00:23 It's not to say that animals aren't great. Because animal mind is exactly like all mind. You know, mind is great. Mind has potential to help others and so forth. And some animals... Like these special story animals where people will talk about, for example, an animal running into a burning building and bringing the baby out or something like that. Report an error

1:00:47 Maybe that dog was a fireman in his last life or something. So they have the imprints just like us. They still have the imprints in their minds from whatever their last life was like. And they talk about how it's even possible with the right... Conditions and so forth, animals can actually attain bodhicitta in an animal body if, of course, they study bodhicitta and so forth and the conditions all come together. Report an error

1:01:16 So it's not impossible. It's just obviously much harder because they can't come to class and they can't read and they can't meditate and things like that. But they definitely have the clear, pure nature of the mind the same as we do. The cause of taking an animal rebirth is ignorance. ignorance. So, like, really, um... Report an error

1:01:38 Dense ignorance, that's all. So if we have a lot of ignorance in our life and we just feed that ignorance, basically like sort of couch potato lives, is actually a cause for the animal rebirth. Report an error

1:01:51 So just kind of numbing out is the cause, or sleeping a lot. They say that's another one, just sleeping a lot day in and day out. Not if we're tired and we've had a big trip because our hand always goes up or after class. I'm like, is it wrong to sleep? No, no. It's just day in and day out being very lazy. Laziness is one of the animals. Report an error

1:02:15 And then sometimes... Sometimes I can see strong animal karma in myself. I see that I just would really love to just lay in bed. I'm like, no! Report an error

1:02:27 No, I've got to get up. And actually, I was going to say Bodhi's really good in that way. She's really great at getting me on the cushion. And then she goes back to bed. She's like, okay, she's on the cushion. My work is done. The spirit realm. And yes, the Buddha did teach about a realm where in the desire realm that people don't have or the beings don't have physical bodies. Report an error

1:02:56 Sometimes, so all the different spirits have different names. Nagas are considered spirits. Predas, ghosts. Sometimes people have just very strong attachment to a place in that you can actually then have a rebirth as a spirit or a ghost inside that place. You know, like in this house, some people, some residents have seen a particular ghost and they've described her. And we asked Geshe-la about it and Geshe-la's like, oh yes, yes, you know. Report an error

1:03:33 How are you looking at me? Don't worry, I'm not naming names. A number of people have seen, and it's always the same description. And we asked the landlords a little bit about the people that had built the house, and it sounds to most of us like the daughter of the original builder of the house who lived her whole life here and died here. Report an error

1:03:57 And probably was very attached to this house. She hasn't harmed anyone, and Geshe-la always just says that our response should just be compassion because they have a lower rebirth than us, and so we should just have... Compassion for her. The cause for the spirit realm is craving, so a very strong attachment. Report an error

1:04:17 With hungry ghosts, which is a whole different ball of wax, there's a type of rebirth called hungry ghosts or predis. Which is based on this very strong craving mind, just constantly wanting, wanting, wanting. In that particular rebirth, they can never actually get the object of their desire. So there's constant torment of being thirsty or hungry and then seeking that. Report an error

1:04:46 That object to relieve that and being unable to eat it for some reason or being unable to reach it. Like it disappears like a mirage. There's all sorts of descriptions of these in the scriptures. And some, yeah, so we'll get into that. I was going to say some humans have that experience in this life. But very, very strong craving is what creates this particular realm. Report an error

1:05:12 And then the final one is the hell realms, and a lot of people are kind of put off when they hear about Buddhism having hell realms. The cause for being born in the hell realms is very, very strong hatred, very, very strong hatred and anger, pure, undistracted anger. So in the Prada realm, it's like this pure, undistracted craving that just never lets up. Report an error

1:05:38 The entire rebirth, until of course the karma ends and that person or that being is reborn in whatever their new rebirth is. Because nothing lasts forever, just as long as the karma for that particular rebirth exists. Report an error

1:05:52 And then once that karma is gone, then that rebirth is done. So the hell rooms are the same way. You're reborn in the hells if you've lived a life of just pure hatred. Without ever trying to counter it, without ever trying to restrain, without ever trying to develop any wisdom about it or owning any of your anger, just constant anger and hatred. Report an error

1:06:23 Even in our worst case, like, you know, I came from a family where my father had a lot of anger. He also had a really loving heart, and he just, so he wasn't like that, you know. But I think some of us have experienced somebody like that, you know. Even if we don't know them well, we've seen them or read about them. That kind of just, it's almost like there was a cartoon a while, a number of years ago called The Angriest Dog in the World. Report an error

1:06:47 Does anybody remember that cartoon? It would just be like day in, it would show the sun going up. the sun going down on the angriest dog in the world he would just be standing in the backyard just being angry that's what I think of as somebody who's a candidate for the hell realms They say that all of us have had all of these rebirths over and over, right? Because we're ignorant of how they're created until now. Report an error

1:07:09 Now we're no longer ignorant. So we just keep creating the causes and we keep experiencing the results without ever changing. We just boom, boom, boom and so we're going through all these different realms and then the karma runs out and then we're born to the next one and then the karma runs out and then we're born to the next one. Report an error

1:07:28 So we're just kind of like this, you know, for eons we've been doing that. So I was going to say that there are three, one of my teachers actually did it like, taught me like this and I think it's useful especially when you're a beginning Buddhist or beginning on the Buddhist path. There are three different ways we can look at it. One is literally, which is... Report an error

1:07:47 Honestly, the way that they are usually taught traditionally, you know, that these are realms and you go to them, you know. So it sounds, you know, they talk about them like that. Another way to think about them, and I think it's a little easier to contemplate them that way, is that all of these realms exist within the human realm. Report an error

1:08:11 So if I can't get my mind around, I mean, obviously the animal realm is a little bit easier to... I understand because we see animals. There's a number of these beings that we don't see. And so we kind of are like, how do I know that there's any spirits in here? Because I don't see them, right? Of course, how do I know there's any insects? And there's definitely some insects in here. But how do I know there's any hell beings? Report an error

1:08:37 That just seems a bit over the top. Until you've studied for a while, until you actually have met llamas like... His Holiness or Lama Zopa Rinpoche who as you begin to trust them more and more and they make more and more references and it's like well maybe there is something to that. But for me it's actually easier to think about them all existing within the human realm. And that's why that whole idea of like sort of the grade A and the grade B starlets for the gods and the demigods make more sense. Report an error

1:09:09 Like people who have like everything. And just live this whole life of excess and wanton desire, right? Giving into everything is sort of like the gods. And people who live down the block, in a little worse house, are like the demigods. And they're always somehow, you know, suing the gods. And the gods always win the suits. And so that's very much like the gods and the demigods. Report an error

1:09:35 We know the humans, right? Animals, there are a lot of humans that live like animals. Their main desire is just to survive the day. Nothing beyond that. They just need food. They just need and they often don't get it. They just need something to drink and they often don't get it. They live like in a war zone, for example, or tsunami or wherever where everything is just hard and there's nothing beyond that bare survival. Report an error

1:10:05 That's like the animals, really. So, I mean, for me, that's easier to sort of understand than thinking of a whole new realm. And don't we know people, haven't we observed people, even in ourselves sometimes, that mind of constant craving? I definitely, for a while, I still consider her a friend, but I haven't seen her for many years. But she grew up really, really poor, and so she's just constantly craving. Report an error

1:10:33 All the time. She'd order one thing and she would barely put the magazine down and she'd want to order something else. She's just constantly wanting more things. And I was just very intrigued by that just because I've never really been that. I mean, I have my own issues with desire, but it's not usually catalog shopping. Report an error

1:10:53 But I just saw that mind, and once I became a Buddhist, I was like, wow, there's that constant craving, you know, that gives rise to so much suffering and can create the cause of this other realm. So you can see it in humans, too, that constant craving. And then this mind of hatred and anger that I was just talking about. Report an error

1:11:16 We can see that in humans, too. And so the third idea, so the first one is that all of this is very literal and there are places like that. The second one is that all of these realms can exist within the human realm. And the third one is that they can all exist within our own mind, right? Even in a single day. We can go from having everything and being on top of the world to completely filled and, you know, on fire with anger. Report an error

1:11:46 And then suddenly craving or, you know, it could just be like one thing or another. Throughout the day, it can be exhausting sometimes living in our own mind. So you can actually see all of the different realms existing in your own mind, I think, if you know what to look for and you start looking for it. Report an error

1:12:02 So any questions about any of that? And it can be simple questions too, like I missed number three or something like that. Any questions about the desire realm and the different realms of existence that our minds cause? Report an error

1:12:22 Could you just review form and formlessness one more time? Form and formlessness, yeah. So form and formlessness are two, okay, so there's three realms of existence, the desire realm, the form realm, and the formless realm. And the form realm and the formless realm are far more subtle than the desire realm. The desire realm where... Report an error

1:12:51 Most of us in this room, I think I can say, if not all of us, live, or it's our experience anyway, is much more gross. The things that we crave, the things that we are reversed to are much more gross, more physical and so forth. That's just the level that we're working on. For the form realm, it's much more subtle, and the formless realm, it's the most subtle. Report an error

1:13:19 Different states of mind, different levels of meditation. Those are the things that you're craving and you're attached to and that you're averse to rather than fried chicken and the girl next door, you know, which is kind of the level that we're living at here. So it's kind of like it goes from gross to subtle to most subtle. Does that help, Steve? Report an error

1:13:45 Yeah, so you create the cause to be born there due to... Practicing deep, deep states of concentration meditation but without any kind of positive motivation. So with a motivation just to experience those deep states of meditation, to have your own bliss, for example, follow your bliss, or to... To maybe master it and become like a great guru to everyone in the world. You know, I mean, people meditate for different reasons. It's odd when you think about all the different reasons that people meditate, but all you have to do is look in the back of New Age magazines and you can see that not everybody uses meditation for a positive outcome. Report an error

1:14:32 So yeah, form and formless realms are those places that we take rebirth if we are able to subdue our mind, but for no purpose other than our own gain. Report an error

1:14:44 That's where we end up. Report an error

1:14:50 Yes, exactly. It's just a degree of subtlety, that's all. Anybody Report an error

1:15:03 else? I have two questions. One is if you could describe the asuris and suris or asuris. And also just tag on to the description of... Form in formless realms and the cause being these deep meditations without the right motivation. If someone were to have deep meditations with the right motivation, where would they end up? Report an error

1:15:38 Probably very high human, unless they became a Buddha in one life. I mean, obviously, if we reach levels of becoming a bodhisattva, Or an Arya being, an Arhat, you know, like there are all these different levels of spiritual attainment. We can still keep a human body, right? And in fact, they say that, like, I would have no idea if any of you guys were bodhisattvas or very high level bodhisattvas or that you had a direct perception of emptiness because you could still appear very normal to the outer person. Report an error

1:16:15 I mean, unless I had clairvoyance, which I don't, so. So they would be born as a human, like, you know. His Holiness, you know, who always just says, I'm just a simple monk. So obviously, for most of us, we don't think he's just a simple monk, but he does have a human body, and he uses that human body like hell. Report an error

1:16:36 I mean, he really uses it. He's using it to help sentient beings. But he still does his meditation every day and all that stuff, so who knows where he goes with that meditation. So, yeah. That's why we pray for this thing that's called a precious human rebirth, which I'm hoping to get to, which I will get to definitely before the end of this class. Report an error

1:16:59 And that will be what your meditation will be, is sort of contemplating the opportunity that you have in this life with this precious human rebirth. So yeah, most of the time, if I'm not praying for complete enlightenment, I'm at least praying for... The conditions so that I can have another precious human rebirth so I can start over where I get as far as I can in this life and then just start. Report an error

1:17:26 Again, without much time lost, hopefully. I feel like I lost a lot of time in his life. Hopefully next life will be more like John and I'll show up for class and, you know. Report an error

1:17:36 Yeah, so he got his wish. I must have done something. It took me a while, but I got here. I got here. Yeah, so that's a lot of what that's about, that kind of constantly praying and working for precious human rebirth so that we can kind of hit the ground running. Report an error

1:17:53 Yeah. Anybody else? Question? Why don't you guys take a break, and then we'll come back and talk about precious human rebirth. And if we have time, we'll do the meditation. If not, that's okay. Report an error

1:18:18 Oh, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't have your email right, so I tried different versions, and I finally just asked Marcella to send it to me again. Report an error

1:18:31 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Report an error

1:18:36 But you can thank her because she sent it to me again. Report an error

1:18:43 Oh, here, I can unplug it. Here we go. Report an error

· · ·

1:20:18 Thank you. Report an error

1:20:24 How are you? Report an error

1:20:44 Thank you. Report an error

1:20:55 we haven't been so much. Oh, yeah. Report an error

1:21:23 I love bodhicitta, I'll go back to work. Report an error

1:21:39 yeah, no, and it led me, Judith, I was just thinking, yeah, Judith, she said, oh, you, I'm on the mailing list, now, I don't see them yet, I haven't been, but I'm on the mailing list, and after that, I'm like, oh, yeah, and I had a retreat, she did a workshop or something like Report an error

1:22:08 Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We'll breathe, we'll breathe, we'll breathe out, oh my God, that she's so cool, yeah, yeah. Report an error

1:22:31 Yeah, so I don't know. I don't know. That is so funny. I know. I know. I know. I know. They will. So, I mean. Yeah, no. So, it's not just. I don't know. I mean, I just know. And then you're like, Judith. Report an error

1:22:50 Thank you. is often, but usually on Wednesday, Friday in the morning. Yeah, yeah. Did you just pray? Oh, no, it wasn't. No, it wasn't. They had a teacher there, and there was Oh, I see. I've got you. Report an error

1:23:26 Oh, that's what I'm going to do. Yeah, I'm going to go over there. Yeah. I'm going, I'm always going for it. Yeah. I don't know. It's just, you know, I'm going to be doing this kind of thing. Yeah. That's so cool. I don't know. I haven't been a teenager. I've heard that. It's very focused on. It's interesting. I'll be here this morning. Thank you. I'll be Thank you. Report an error

1:24:19 Thank you. good, but I don't know. Report an error

1:24:30 there was like an empty, empty of CSO and I think we should correct them. I'm going to check it out! Report an error

1:24:48 Yeah, no, I've been to Greenville, it's been a long, long time. I've never been to Greenville. Oh, it's an amazing site. Yeah, yeah, was he there? Yeah, yeah. I talked to Mimi like, yeah. I don't know, I just keep working with Paul. You're very challenging. Report an error

1:25:11 Yeah, that was, yeah, yeah. okay. And it was weird. Report an error

1:25:21 I gathered that from, you know, the questions. Report an error

1:25:28 I'm going to trade them. Later. Right. And it was nice because then afterwards Lama Tsongkhapa, Shantideva, Shantideva. Report an error

1:25:44 Thank you. know, I travel a lot for work, you know, Sunday it's my friend, you know. Because, oh yeah, when I emailed it, I'm like, 24 hours. Report an error

1:26:03 I can't handle that. Oh, I'm in sales, I sold plastic products. Report an error

1:26:12 We don't have a medical clean room yet. Report an error

1:26:17 and it was cool. Lama Zopa Rinpoche. No, no, no, no, no. I've been researching everything because, you know, I was really interested in this and started to really follow it. And I've seen, you know, there's nothing up there. Report an error

1:27:00 There's a lot of Xan and some other linages, Tibetan, but not... Yeah, that sounds about Report an error

1:27:05 a specific one, and so it's so funny, I see the Morin study group, and I said, okay, that's I'm interested. When someone said to me, oh, yeah, you did three of the Morin study group, and I ran up for that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was so incredible that she was there. I don't think she goes on that many trips or I don't know. Report an error

1:27:42 No, no, let me give it to you. Report an error

1:28:02 Thank you. Report an error

1:28:29 My mom is doing it a little bit, but not enough. Report an error

· · ·

1:29:21 This is how I disable it. I'm like, okay, I just pull it apart. So the poor person tuning in at home is going to be like, what's wrong? There's a sudden break in it. Report an error

1:29:35 Maybe we can add a little voiceover. Keep going through the break. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about what makes a human rebirth a precious human rebirth. Report an error

1:29:49 Obviously not all human rebirths are precious. If you're living on the streets or if you're living in a war zone or if you're constantly hungry because you live in a place where there's famine and things like that, that's not a precious human rebirth. You need certain things in place to have a precious human rebirth. And so basically they talk about we have what are called leisures or freedoms and we have fortunes. Report an error

1:30:22 We have the good fortune. So we have a certain amount of opportunities. And there are traditional ways to meditate on this and we aren't going to do that. The way we're going to meditate on it is to think about the opportunities that we have in our lives right now. Because if we have a certain amount of opportunities, in other words, we have a certain amount of good health, we have a certain amount of intelligence, we have a certain amount of good conditions. Report an error

1:30:48 We have some attraction to the teachings. We have found, you know, a place to study the teachings, for example. Like some people have a certain attraction to the teachings and they live in a place where it's actually illegal to gather in groups of a certain size. Or they live in a place that has a state religion, you know, and it's not Buddhism or something like that. Report an error

1:31:13 And there are a lot of people in the world. Think of the people in Tibet. For many years, they were free to practice, but they aren't free to practice now. And if they ever want to get beyond a certain level of practice, they actually have to leave. There's not any way to stay where their families and their history is except to not practice. It's sort of a choice. So most of the good practitioners end up leaving the country because they can't. Report an error

1:31:40 They can't even study to a certain level. Some Lamas that I've met, like Azhar Rinpoche, for example, who was a very, very high Lama, couldn't even get the lamrim in Tibet. He had to leave Tibet. He left much later. He left in the 80s because of so many different duties and so forth because he was the head of a monastery. Report an error

1:32:01 But as the head of a monastery, he never even could get lamrim teachings. We can get lamrim teachings. It's kind of amazing when you think about that. So he actually came. And he's this Rinpoche, he's a really great Rinpoche. They say he's the reincarnation of Lama Tsongkhapa's father. And he came and studied with Geshe-la. He would come every day and study with Geshe-la, the Lamrim, because he had never been able to get it in Tibet. Report an error

1:32:23 So there are lots of places in this world that even if we have a strong desire to study from a past life, we can't even find it. Or maybe the books aren't translated into our language. Report an error

1:32:38 Because now there are so many books in English, but 30 years ago there weren't. So that was a different karmic rebirth. If we had been born at that point wanting to practice and we didn't speak Tibetan, we would have been kind of sunk. Report an error

1:32:52 And most Lamas didn't speak English either. Now there's probably places in Eastern Europe and so forth where the books haven't been translated yet. So it's like that. So we have... We're not born into these different realms like animal realm and spirit realm and hell realm and so forth this time. So we're born in the human realm this time. Report an error

1:33:18 And we're born with certain things in place like intelligence and health. I happen to live in a city that's pretty progressive and there's a lot of Dharma centers around. This is like a Dharma wonderland, you know. When you talk to anyone that's moved here from another city where it just doesn't exist, even in the U.S., there's loads of places in the U.S. Report an error

1:33:42 where you just can't find any teachings, any Buddhist teachings. So that's what precious human rebirth is, is when we happen to have all of... Those things in place. We have good health. We have the conditions to study. We have an inkling to study. We have some sort of a draw to do it. So it's really just talking about internal and external conditions. And we have them. All of us in the room, to some degree or another, have them. Report an error

1:34:13 What we end up doing a lot of times is waiting for better conditions that may never come. We may not have any better conditions. So a lot of times we end up thinking, well, I'll really practice when I retire. I hear people saying that even when they're like in their 30s or something. It's like, well, first of all, how do you know you're going to live that long? And then secondly, how do you know that your conditions will be any better? What if you like break your hip on your 54th birthday or something like that? Report an error

1:34:42 And then like you have to go through all of this physical stuff. Or we just think, you know, we don't put a year on it, but we just think, well, I'll practice when I get a better apartment or when I get a better job or when I leave this, you know, partner or when I get that partner, you know. Whatever it is, somehow, it's not now, it'll be later, you know, when I have more energy, when I have less energy, when I, you know, sometime in the future. Report an error

1:35:10 Vague future. So that's just called procrastination. And the whole idea of this contemplation is that we get that we have this great opportunity. We get that we have these great conditions and that that's all we know. The now is it. What we don't know is what's going to happen tomorrow. So we might as well study now. We might as well practice now. So it's kind of like taking the best. You should come out of this meditation on precious human rebirth. Report an error

1:35:40 Feeling kind of jazzed, you know, feeling like psyched out, you know, like you're ready to do something with this precious human rebirth of yours. It should make you more energetic. That's kind of the idea behind it. So His Holiness, I'll end with another, before I lead you guys in the meditation. Report an error

1:36:02 His Holiness the Dalai Lama has this great quote, and I actually read it almost every morning as part of my motivation, and it reminded me of it when you were talking, Winnie, about just repeating your mantra, I will not get angry today. Report an error

1:36:16 Sometimes I stress that line out of this. He said, every day, and you're going to get this in your homework, so you don't have to worry about it. Every day, think as you wake up. Today, I am fortunate to have woken up. I am alive. I have a precious human life. I am not going to waste it. I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others, to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. Report an error

1:36:41 I am going to have kind thoughts towards others. I am not going to get angry or think badly about others. I am going to benefit others as much as I can. Report an error

1:36:53 It's just a great motivation for your day. I'm sure he probably just said that as part of a talk, too, and then it became, you know, it's like on banners and bookmarks and so forth. Any questions before we go into the final meditation, this meditation on a precious human life? Winnie, yeah. Report an error

1:37:20 I'm just trying to plan my next couple of weeks. The Saturday retreat, do you know where and the time? Here. We, we're talking too. Report an error

1:37:27 And the time? 10.30 to 4 is usually, depending on how many people come. Sometimes we leave by 3.30. But like that, it's day long. And it's here. And I'm going to mention it at the end. Thank you. I'm going to hand out a little presentation topic ideas. So you have a little bit of time to think about them. Now the entire meditation, everyone's going to be like, completely wasting your precious human life worrying about the presentation topic. Report an error

1:37:56 Believe me, our idea of a presentation topic is, You're just like reading something that you learned in class. Report an error

1:38:06 That's it. That's all you have to do. And if you want to do more than that, then that's fine. Some people just talk off the top of their head with no preparation. Some people just sort of bring their notebook and kind of comb through it. Some people have done like some sort of profound preparation and do like some sort of a big, you know, somebody just did this one a couple times ago where they did a collage. Report an error

1:38:32 Remember, it was David's wife. Yeah, yeah. And she cut out all these different images and it was just, it was great. Yeah, some people really go crazy with it. And I remember one time Karen made satsas for everyone. And then, of course, you're the second one. You're like, yeah. But most people are just kind of, we're just sitting in a circle and you're just kind of like, you know, okay, I'll go, I'll go. Report an error

1:38:55 And you're just kind of picking out something that meant something to you. So it could be. The clarity of the mind, it could be that you decide you want to lead one of the meditations, in which case, I always think that's the easiest, because you don't have to remember anything. Everybody closes their eyes, so nobody's looking at you, right? Report an error

1:39:13 And I love it, because I get to be led in a meditation, which I never get to do, so that's great. So that's an option, too. There's lots of options where you just pick one of the meditations that you particularly liked and lead us in it. And that's a certain skill, leading a meditation. You might even come up with a meditation. Report an error

1:39:29 I've had students do that and I think that's really cool when they've come up with their own meditation for whatever helped them work with the mind. And some people are just creative that way and I've had that one come up too. Most of the time you're just picking some aspect of the course that... that zinged you in some way, you know, so that just kind of meant something to you. Report an error

1:39:51 It doesn't have to be in any huge profound way. You don't have to be in tears or anything like that. It's just talking about something like, oh wow, the whole idea of karma was really cool or something. Just talk about something from the class. And you can even choose something that wasn't part of the class, but just tell me first so that I can say whether or not it really is something that is. Report an error

1:40:10 Because a lot of times people will just go off on some complete tangent that we're like. It's supposed to be about the mind, something about the mind, anything about the mind. So I would just ask that if you choose something completely different that you tell me. Report an error

1:40:23 But yeah, it'll be here the 8th, 1030 to 334. Report an error

1:40:33 Okay, so we're going to go into this meditation. It's not that long a meditation. It's almost like a pep talk. So I'll be the cheerleader, the Precious Human Life cheerleader. Report an error

1:40:48 Get you guys all riled up. And then we'll talk about another aspect of the practice area, potluck. So now you're going to spend the whole meditation going, what can I make? Report an error

1:41:02 You can pick up stuff too if you don't like to cook. We just don't want like 10 pieces of bread or something. Although I'm sure at some point we'll get it. Some part we've been really lucky. Okay, so again, just check your posture. Report an error

1:41:19 If you're holding tension in your shoulders about that presentation, just shake it out, stretch your neck from side to side, and take some nice deep belly breaths and let them go. Report an error

1:41:47 So we spend the beginning of this meditation just contemplating what our current situation is like, really looking at the opportunities that we have right now. Report an error

1:42:07 In the past, haven't I often been anxious and worried about my problems and the meaning of life? Full of doubts and uncertainty. Report an error

1:42:20 Haven't I wasted a good part of my life obsessing about meaningless distractions? Report an error

1:42:32 But now I've met the amazing teachings of the Buddha, which can completely transform my life. Report an error

1:42:44 The Buddha was once exactly like me, with a mind filled with worries. I got easily angry or depressed. Report an error

1:42:59 But by working with his mind, he was able to completely overcome all his problems. And then he was kind enough to show us how to do it too. Report an error

1:43:13 And this is what Buddhism is. And now I've connected with these proven methods. Report an error

1:43:29 These teachings show clearly how karma works and how I cause my own suffering by allowing my mind to run wild. Report an error

1:43:42 They show me how to understand and discipline my mind through meditation and how doing this can liberate me from all kinds of pain forever. Report an error

1:43:57 They show me the true meaning of life and Report an error

1:44:04 the path to accomplishing that meaning, Report an error

1:44:11 the path to achieving my own true potential. Report an error

1:44:24 I can begin to see how right now I have all the conditions to practice and eliminate my own suffering and problems forever. There's never been a better situation, a more perfect place to practice. Report an error

1:44:42 Up to now in this life and in all my countless past lives, I've been a slave to my ignorance and all my delusions. Report an error

1:44:53 But right now I have the ideal situation to achieve everything I've been looking for. Report an error

1:45:07 Unlike all the other sentient beings who are in unfortunate circumstances such as angry hell beings, craving predates, ignorant animals, or human beings born in places of war, famine, hunger, disease, or somewhere where the Dharma doesn't exist. Report an error

1:45:31 Right now I'm free of all these hindrances, Report an error

1:45:38 but this perfect situation won't last long. Report an error

1:45:45 It may last for a few more months, a few days, even one more day. Report an error

1:45:57 Having all these conditions to practice doesn't necessarily just end with my death. Karma also changes. I could lose interest. I could move on to something else. Gradually or instantly, people do it all the time. Report an error

1:46:22 So many times in the past I've wished, hoped and prayed to have the perfect conditions I'm enjoying right now. Report an error

1:46:34 Having this situation is the fruit of my own effort and virtue. I created this situation through my own past good deeds. Report an error

1:46:52 This perfect situation is extremely rare and difficult to obtain. Many people in the world would give everything they have to be able to enjoy the practice of Buddhism as I do now. Report an error

1:47:13 Not everyone who wants to study can study. Report an error

1:47:24 At this very moment, there are so many people experiencing all kinds of painful circumstances, being completely depressed, sad or lonely, painfully facing the horrors of sickness, old age, injury or death. And they would give anything to change their situation for the one I have now. Report an error

1:47:50 In a short while, I could become just like them, so I can't waste time. Report an error

1:48:00 Life goes by so quickly, day after day, month after month, and I'm constantly caught up in activities and problems, but suddenly it will all come to an end, and I'll only have regret, seeing that everything I've been doing will be lost and of no benefit at all. Report an error

1:48:28 If I let my mind constantly follow the distractions of thinking about the past or planning for the future, complaining about small or meaningless discomforts, Report an error

1:48:40 Indulging in selfish pleasures that would be such a terrible waste of this most precious time that's so difficult to find and so easily lost. Report an error

1:49:01 By remembering this and feeling great joy for having all of these wonderful conditions, I'm going to take the essence of this perfect human rebirth. Report an error

1:49:11 I'm going to work with my mind as much as I can. I'm going to practice with strong mindfulness, with joy. I'm going to try to be kinder. Watch my actions, my speech and whatever I do with my mind. Report an error

1:49:31 This is the best way to give happiness to others and in the end it's the best way to solve my own problems. Report an error

1:49:49 So we dedicate the merit of this meditation and this class to each one of us being able to recognize the preciousness of our opportunity right now and using that to become the spur to using this life. Report an error

1:50:12 To fully awakening your own minds and becoming a source of happiness for everyone, including ourselves. Report an error

1:50:35 Thank you. Report an error

1:50:42 So any questions about that? That's the meditation that you have. It's basically like a pep talk, and I didn't write it. It actually comes from Spiritual Friends, which is a collection of meditations that were created by monks and nuns of the FPMT, or the IMI, I guess, which is the branch of the FPMT. Report an error

1:51:02 of ordained saṅgha. And Tenzin Chokyi said that when she found this particular meditation, she's a good friend of mine, and she's going to come a couple times next year. I'm going to make sure of it. But anyway, she's a great teacher. And she said that when she found this particular one, she used it as her motivation every single day when she was in a three-year retreat. Report an error

1:51:28 And so once she told me that, then I started using it again, too. It really is just sort of a... It's like, wow, you have all these great conditions. You could lose them at any time. You're like, oh God, okay. Report an error

1:51:44 So it's a way of meditating on your precious human rebirth without the lists of, because those of us who have studied Buddhism for a while, later on you'll get sort of the list of all the different things that you don't have and that you do have and all that stuff. We'll get to that. This does the same thing. Report an error

1:52:03 So a couple of announcements. Report an error

1:52:08 So we have one more of this class. So next week is our last class, and then Saturday next weekend is our practice day. And it's a potluck, so I'll ask again next class to see who all is coming. But just for a head count, how many people are intending to come on the 8th? Good. Okay. Report an error

1:52:32 Yes, and if you can only come in the morning, that's fine, or in the afternoon, that's fine. Let me tell you the general game plan for those of you that have never done a practice day with me before. Report an error

1:52:45 In the morning, I just lead you guys through a selection of different meditations that you've already done, so you're pretty familiar with them, and sometimes I'll throw something in there that you're not familiar with, but usually they're all ones that you're familiar with. And we try to stay in silence. So we have a little bit of a retreat feel for the morning. So from 10.30 to late 12.30 or something, we'll do that. And then at the end, I sort of open it up and people share if they have experiences they want to share or questions that came up for them or something like that during that meditation. Report an error

1:53:17 But I just sort of do little small ones and then I say, okay, now you can stretch. And then, okay, and then we do another like 15, 20 minutes and then, okay, now you can stretch. So that way you don't have to sit there for two hours without moving, you know, don't worry about that. So I make sure that you can stretch. But we stay in silence and then we open it up and we discuss for a little bit and then we have lunch. Report an error

1:53:36 And the lunch is always like a really important part because we kind of bond, you know. And you're all relieved because you made it through all the meditation, you know. Report an error

1:53:44 And then we usually bring our tea and dessert in and then we watch a little Discovering Buddhism film about the mind. So it's less than a half hour, a very short film. It allows us to digest it a little bit. And then we do the presentations. So the presentation ideas, basically you're just, I mean, it's very low key. Report an error

1:54:06 Don't get freaked out. It's just basically to share something that you got out of the class and it can be very... I don't want any of them to be more than 10 minutes. Something in the neighborhood of between 5 and 10 minutes is totally fine. You don't have to stand up. You don't have to use PowerPoint. You can just sit and read. It can be very, very low-key. But it's really great to take part in it. Report an error

1:54:34 And even if you don't feel like you want to, Like still come because you can listen to everybody else's. I totally understand. I used to drop any class that had an oral presentation. I mean that was like the minute I got the syllabus if I saw oral presentation I'd be out of there. So I can totally understand and they are not mandatory at all. What usually happens though is that even if you're not intending to you still share something. Report an error

1:54:59 Because it's a sharing moment. I mean, it's a California sharing moment. We're all sitting in a circle. What else can you do? But you're not required to at all. So it's just still please come because it's great to hear everybody else's. And it's really a nice way to end a class. So that's all I'll say about that. Report an error

1:55:21 The next Discovering Buddhism class starts then on the 20th. So we have a break. And then it starts on the 20th and that'll be with Venerable Carol. And it's a class on how to meditate. So it's from the very beginning to the very end, like how do you set up a meditation practice and what do you do and so forth. Report an error

1:55:39 So it should be a great class. That runs until December 8th, I think. And so then we won't do one because of the holidays and everything. And then we'll do another Discovering Buddhism class in January and I'll teach that one. So we'll kind of go back and forth like that. And that one will be called Presenting the Path. And I think it's presenting the whole path from start to finish in eight weeks or something like that. Report an error

1:56:03 But it just sort of gives you an overview before we start taking it topic by topic. A couple of other things I just wanted to tell you, just because now I'm doing the program coordination temporarily, but Sanghi Kadro is coming, who is the author of the book How to Meditate, which is the required reading for the next class. Report an error

1:56:24 Kathleen McDonald is her non-ordained name, but SK is what we call her, those of us in the know, Sanghi Kadro. She's going to come the first weekend in January, and she's going to do a Friday night and an all-day Saturday on compassion, and then a Sunday afternoon separate talk on depression. So that'll be great. Definitely wanted to sort of put that in your minds. I know it's a long way off, but it was very exciting to know that she's coming. Report an error

1:56:52 And also, Two weeks after that, also in January, Geshe-la is going to do a weekend retreat on Chenrezig. Yeah, right before he takes off for India for a couple of months. And that's open to all levels and it would be really nice. And also we're going to allow people to just come for one session. So you don't have to come for the whole retreat. You can just come and just get a taste of what a deity retreat is like. Report an error

1:57:14 So Chen Resik is the Buddha of Compassion and Omani Pemi Hung is his mantra. So this particular retreat, we did this once before and it was really sweet energy throughout the center. It's sort of based on the Nunye Sadhana, which is a thousand-armed Chen Resik. Report an error

1:57:37 But without, of course, all the fasting and prostrations, you get to just sit and meditate and visualize and then chant mantras. And he really wants us to do lots of mantras, so people are definitely going to be doing it. And for such a small, it's only going to be a weekend, but for such a small time, people really reported feeling a real difference in their mind. Report an error

1:57:59 So it definitely is something to look forward to. And you don't even have to leave home. You can just do it right here at the center. I want to tell you those two things are coming up in January. Okay. Thank you. So let's see. So this is the ideas for presentations. Report an error

1:58:19 Don't freak. She's trying to hyperventilate. And then this is the homework. Thank you. Report an error

1:58:37 And glasses. Report an error

1:58:43 Sorry? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, okay. Then let's see. A few of you needed binders. serious. Report an error

1:58:51 And we made some binders. And then also, if you didn't come to the first class, or if you did and you still didn't get one, like I think you had, you were there the first class, but for some reason you didn't get one. Okay, so you needed both, right? Just the little one? Just this one. Okay, okay. So you got this one? Report an error

1:59:12 Okay, so who else? I know Theo you needed. Did you need these two, the binder readings? And do you already have Becoming Your Own Therapist? No. Okay, you can get both of them. Report an error

1:59:30 Absolutely, you can just come for the meditation part. Yeah, Report an error

1:59:36 yeah, yeah, no, that's right. I thought I saw you in there. I was like, yeah, no, that's great. That's totally fine. And did somebody else, before you do, who else needed binder readings? I had it written down, but I can't. Oh, John Ramirez, but he's not here. And John, the other John, right? You need both, right? Okay, there you go. Could you? Report an error

1:59:56 Gina, could you pass that to him? And then I think this is John Ramirez. Did anybody else not get a copy of Becoming Your Own Therapist? Did you get a binder reading, though? Report an error

2:00:08 Okay, so you have electronic. Are you okay with it, electronic? Okay. Okay. Gina, okay. I just didn't. I wanted to finish that. Report an error

2:00:21 Everybody got homework? Everybody got presentation list? Okay, Report an error

2:00:33 great. Thank you. Did you have anything else that you wanted to ask? Yeah. No, no, no. No, no, no. Report an error

2:00:49 Oh, put them outside. You can put them outside. Yeah, yeah, just what I do a lot of times is I'll put them in a jar and then take the jar outside. Report an error

2:01:03 Yeah, or just put them across the street or something like that. Yeah, yeah, sometimes I see people with like little Tupperware and they'll put them all in the Tupperware and then take it down the block. Gardening's hard because there's definitely lots of little critters, yeah. it on down. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Report an error

2:01:00 I'm going transfer it to my neighbors. Report an error

2:01:19 Yeah, I know. Well, we all did. We didn't know. That's what ignorance is. We just didn't know. You know, if I do, I always make sure they have a way out. Report an error

2:01:30 You know, like if I vacuum up something and I know it's in there, then I'll just make sure I leave the bag open and in the trash because they can definitely get out. They're smart, you know. But yeah, yeah. Sure, yeah. Report an error

2:01:45 I know. Isn't that hard? I know. Well, you know, Bodhi's biggest thing is she gets attracted by the mice, and she's definitely caught a few. And if I catch her with one and I actually say drop, she drops. It's like a dog. She's very much like a dog, actually. But she'll drop it. But, of course, sometimes she does it when I'm not here, and then she leaves it in my room as a present. Report an error

2:02:07 The other one who passed away last year, Shanti, she was actually very... She's a different personality, so she wasn't at all interested in the mice. In fact, she couldn't see what Bodhi was saying. She would just look at me and then look at the mouse and be like, what? But a fly would come in the room and she'd jump up and I'd be like, no! Because I didn't want her to get the karma, so I'd try to stop her. And of course she thought in the short term she was probably irritated, you know, but she didn't kill. Report an error

2:02:34 So anyway, that's the idea. We do the best we can. God, it's so hard. It's so hard. Report an error

2:02:47 I know. Try different ways. I mean, it's, yeah, I know. It's because they go outside and they get new stuff. Yeah. That's right. That's right. There's all these different. That's right. I know. I've done that too. You go and get all these different ones. I know. Report an error

2:03:13 And even the stuff like, you know, Advantage and stuff like that, it kills the ones that bite. So it's not like it just repels. It's like the one. Report an error

2:03:30 No, it's a hard call. Report an error

2:03:37 But I know that there are Buddhists out there who have tried other ideas. I would just, yeah, I know. I mean, for me, it's sort of like, after this cat, no more, because I just don't even want to. I mean, she's an indoor cat, so we're pretty. Report an error

2:04:17 Well, you know, I mean, what I have learned, and we did try it, is to, you can put... Different scents. If anybody would like to help John pick up all these cushions, he's single-handedly cleaning the entire cupboard. You put sort of different kinds of scents and repellents on the carpets and then vacuum. Report an error

2:04:41 That's when I'll vacuum and I'll put it right before. I know, but I don't necessarily want to kill them. I just don't want them in the house. Report an error

2:04:58 Well, it doesn't, though, according to Buddhism. It's just really negative karma. And to get reborn into this particular little body, they still are a mind that can become a Buddha. It's interesting, now when I look at them and I'll be like, wow, I don't want them in the house. I literally comb the cat and I'll pull them off and throw them out the window. But of course then I think, well, what if they fall on the neighbor's cat, you know? Report an error

2:05:21 But it's an everyday thing. But just vacuuming constantly is one thing. And then just only putting that bag out when they're getting ready to take it. It just makes a little difficult. Report an error

2:05:41 You're like now, no more dog. I know, I do too. I love cats. Report an error

· · ·

2:06:22 Oh, good for you. Yeah, they're pretty readable. He's pretty readable. Sometimes with him, though, I'll like read it and relate it, you know, because I get something out of it the second time through that I missed or something, so. Report an error

2:06:52 Oh, yeah. You want to stick him out the front? You can just take the whole, you can take the whole, yeah, there you go. Oh, there you go. I was just going to say put it on the front porch. like this little bug right there. Report an error

2:07:00 Oh, there you go. Report an error

2:07:07 Oh, the other mic is still on. I was like, why is there such a weird... What Report an error

2:07:31 are we going to do here? Does he have wings? Oh, no, I don't think so. Report an error

2:07:46 I'll check on him if he's out here tomorrow. I hope he can figure it out. He's stuck to the ground. Report an error

2:07:53 Oh no, that's mine. Report an error

2:07:59 I'll be at work again tomorrow, but I'll try to work. Thank you. Thank you. Report an error

· · ·

2:08:39 Thank you. shade it was, but it was not about your mind. Report an error

2:09:30 the number of the three Report an error

2:09:37 I can't remember how long it was, so I was just like, wow. And she and I were talking, Report an error

2:09:50 80%, but you know, if you're a stage four, you're 100%. Yeah, I think it's... Report an error

2:10:12 No matter what, that's what I'm going to do. Report an error

2:10:42 That was the other thing I would say. Report an error

2:10:53 opposite of when we live longer, further apart, then that's what we need to know. So not so much out of attachment. Report an error

Report an error

Passage at . Please listen to the audio before you suggest a fix.

Suggest a fix

Passage at . Please listen to the audio before you suggest a fix.

Related talks

  1. Discovering Buddhism - Mind and Its Potential (8 September 2011)

    Lobsang Chokyi · 8 September 2011 · 2 h 11 min

  2. Discovering Buddhism - Mind and Its Potential (11 December 2008)

    Lobsang Chokyi · 11 December 2008 · 1 h 30 min

  3. Discovering Buddhism - Presenting the Path (20 September 2007)

    Lobsang Chokyi · 20 September 2007 · 2 h 8 min

  4. Discovering Buddhism: Establishing a Daily Practice (11 February 2010)

    Lobsang Chokyi · 11 February 2010 · 2 h 2 min

  5. Discovering Buddhism - Presenting the Path (4 October 2007)

    Lobsang Chokyi · 4 October 2007 · 2 h 10 min

  6. Discovering Buddhism - Presenting the Path (26 February 2009)

    Lobsang Chokyi · 26 February 2009 · 2 h 14 min

Talk by Lobsang Chokyi, recorded 29 September 2011. Original at Tse Chen Ling Center for Tibetan Buddhist Studies via Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/LC_Mind_20110908. Licensed CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. Transcript generated automatically and may contain errors; the audio is the authoritative version.

Recorded at Tse Chen Ling Center, San Francisco, and archived by the center on Internet Archive. More from Tse Chen Ling

Listen on Internet Archive · CC BY-NC-ND 3.0