Essential Dharma

Through periods of meditation, discussion, and experiential learning, this Dharma talk explores the core principles and practices of the Buddhist path. Learn how to deepen your meditation practice, bring elements of the Buddhist path into your life, and find greater efficacy in overcoming mental and emotional habits that cause unnecessary suffering.

Transcript

Welcome everyone.

Thanks for inviting me to come.

It's not my first time in this center.

.

.

It's my first time in this building where it's currently at,

But I went to one of the other babies of the Siddhagarbha Center and one of the other buildings,

I guess.

Maybe I was trying to think 2010 or 2011 for a puja one time when I was a monk.

So maybe I met some of you during that time.

So we'll do a few preliminary chants to prepare our minds for the talk.

And if it's okay with you,

I'd like to do something a little different tonight.

Just in the spirit of Tawas,

To me,

I lived in Crestone for seven years when I was a monastic,

And before that three years at Land of Calm Abiding,

Which is one of Lama Zopa Rinpoche's retreat centers.

And just spending time in Tawas this time,

Really to me,

This very much feels like a place of the heart.

And one way I kind of understand Buddhism for myself,

In the sense of we can read texts,

We can study with great teachers,

We can contemplate on those teachings,

Basically apply what's called the three wisdoms,

We can meditate on those teachings.

And in essence,

When we're connecting with and understanding,

It's sort of food for the head to then bring into the meditation,

Which is heart and food for the heart.

And so Tawas being a heart place,

I kind of decided maybe we'll focus a little bit more on experiential teachings tonight.

Of course,

We need a little bit of head,

A little bit of thought process,

Contemplation for where we're going to move the heart.

That's really important in Buddhism as well.

So the first wisdom we use is the wisdom of listening.

It's the wisdom of just trying to take in with a fresh lens without an overlay of our biases or our concepts as much as possible what the dharma might be.

And then we contemplate on that.

And that's when we can start to apply some techniques of first just contemplating without our own bias,

Trying to understand what is this saying,

And then we rub check the goal of the dharma,

And we contemplate it more seriously against our doubts,

Against our scepticism,

Against other things we may believe.

And we start to work with it that way.

Then when that,

We have some sense of that,

Then we can move into the heart by putting that into practice,

By bringing it into meditation,

Right,

To actually have some experience develop,

And from a larger perspective in Buddhism,

I would say is moving into the realm of the non-conceptual.

It's not necessarily completely non-conceptual,

But it's moving in that realm.

So in the spirit of that,

We have to talk a little bit about the view and sort of frame that a little bit out.

And tonight I thought I'd talk more like a general view of Buddha dharma.

We can talk about it in many different ways,

But often I haven't been here before,

So as a teacher,

I like to just get to know each other.

It's like a first date.

You don't go in teaching Nagarjuna on the first date.

You've got to warm up to that,

Right?

So we've got to do a little bit of warm up.

And to me,

When we were talking about what to do tonight,

I have this talk I call Essential Dharma,

Which basically means I could just show up and say whatever I want.

So I like it because I don't have to plan so much,

And it can be more spontaneous.

But actually I was thinking about it today,

And really I think in my life was quite precious.

The most precious thing to me personally is the Buddha dharma,

Is having a sense of that in my life,

Of a connection to my teachers,

A connection to lineage,

A connection to what the Buddha taught,

And that being a constant reference point for me to work through my experience in life and to develop a sense of what freedom might look like from that perspective.

And so I was thinking about what's essential to that.

And again,

There's a lot of different opinions on what's essential to that.

I think there's some scriptural things that we could just lay out that some of you already know,

But we can repeat.

Then we can get into sort of more some experiential essential maybe.

So that's my idea.

We'll see if that actually happens,

But that's kind of my feeling.

So with that said,

We'll do some preliminary chants.

We'll take refuge,

And then we'll chant a short mandala offering and then the request to turn the wheel of dharma.

And so what I'd like to do is we'll recite it first in English together,

And then I'm going to offer a guided meditation on each of these,

A short one.

Then we'll recite it in Tibetan to connect to the blessing of the lineage through the language.

Oh,

I think we'll do that.

That's my feeling tonight.

So I'm on page 98.

Is that where you,

The prayers before teachings?

You all usually go there?

So we'll recite it in English once together,

And then we'll go from there.

I go for refuge in telen,

Enlightened,

To the Buddha,

The dharma,

And the supreme assembly.

By the merit I create through listening to the dharma,

May I become a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings.

So just for a moment,

You can close your eyes.

You can leave them open,

Whatever feels comfortable.

Just take a moment in a flash just to remember the Buddha.

You can visualize him in the space in front of you.

You can evoke him in your heart.

Or you can just invoke the energy of one of your teachers or the energy of what Buddhist enlightenment means to you,

What that idea of freedom means.

And the Buddha is representing it here.

If we want to imagine him in our mind's eye,

He's wrapped in saffron robes like a monk,

Holds a begging bowl.

His right hand is touching the earth,

And the earth touching mudra,

Which we're going to talk about more tonight.

And I want you to come into your body.

Feel your feet on the ground.

Feel the seat below you as you do this.

So we're inviting the Buddha as a source of what's our own potential,

As a source of reflection and a mirror for our own Buddha nature.

And as a figure of refuge representing the dharma,

Representing the Buddha,

The possibility for enlightenment,

And the supreme assembly or the sangha of those who have transcended their own suffering and work for the benefit of others.

So we can imagine this all embodied in the Buddha.

And as you come into the body more in this,

Just maybe wiggling your toes,

Touching the ground,

Feeling the seat below you,

See if you can sense out into the space in front of you for a moment.

And for some of us,

This is going to be more readily available.

And for some of us,

This might be more challenging.

So wherever you're at,

Just try it.

There's no right or wrong.

There's no perfect.

There's just putting effort.

And as you extend your body into the space in front of you,

You extend it to the sides and also the back.

So you're starting to develop a 360 degree perspective,

Also above and below,

Of the space around you.

And so in the space in front of you,

As you imagine the Buddha,

You also feel the Buddha.

Maybe he's five to six feet in front of you.

If you'd like to make it more elaborate,

He sits on a lion throne,

On a lotus and moon.

And his body shines bright with the marks and signs of an enlightened being.

And as we sit in this energy,

We're also using it as a mirror,

Reminding ourselves of our own potential.

So this doesn't become a theistic practice.

The Buddha here is in our mind's eye,

Mirroring our own very potential for awakening.

At first it may seem so foreign.

It may seem so out of possibility for us.

So I just want you to reflect on that for a moment.

And you can also reflect on the Buddha's qualities.

Being free of fear,

Being free of suffering,

Having all the potential to benefit others in vast amounts of ways,

Having what we call the two types of omniscience,

If you know what those are.

And surrounding you,

Spatially to your sides,

To the back of you,

Are all sentient beings.

You can visualize your close family and friends just directly around you,

Behind you are more distant people in your life,

And then surrounding them are more and more sentient beings,

Vast as space,

Just imagining they fill as far as you can see beyond what you can see in human form.

And as you connect into the energy of refuge,

We're simply attuning the mind to a shelter,

A place where we recognize safety.

So the Dharma is actually the true refuge in that it helps us to uncover our Buddha nature.

And that's being represented in the Buddha here,

The Buddha being a figure of a human being who did it,

Who actually brought about an awakened state free from suffering,

Free from constructs.

So just take a moment to appreciate that in whatever way feels relatable to you right now.

For me,

Refuge is not a practice of worship,

It's a practice of appreciation,

And it's a practice of slowly becoming more sober to where I may actually find happiness versus what is going to lead to suffering.

So just let your mind rest there for a moment.

If you've been thinking about it a lot in the last minute or two,

Drop the thinking and just rest in the heart.

You can just feel the Buddha's power and energy in front of you as a reflection of your own potential.

And with that,

We're going to recite in Tibetan the verse of refuge.

So see if you can stay with that feeling as you recite the words.

Sangecchadang sugicha nam dang jancho bardudani kyabtsuchi dagicha nyengge pesanamgi trulapensir sangejruparsho So again in English,

Now connecting the heart to the meaning.

I go for refuge until I'm enlightened to the Buddha,

The Dharma,

And the Supreme Assembly.

By the merits I create through listening to the Dharma,

May I become a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings.

So with this,

We just tune in for a moment to the sentient beings surrounding us,

This last part of our refuge in bodhicitta prayer.

Just attuning the mind to an appreciation,

Not just for the Buddha in front of us,

But an appreciation for other sentient beings.

Remembering the ups and downs that we experience in our life,

The ups and downs that others experience.

The nature of what it means to circle,

From a Buddhist perspective,

To circle in elements of confusion,

Just not knowing our nature,

Not knowing what is the true cause of happiness and what's the true cause of suffering.

The great Master Padampa Sangh said,

Sentient beings run towards suffering and run away from happiness.

And this really sums up the state of confusion.

So can you allow your heart to open up with a sense of compassion and to let that compassion feed into a sense of bodhicitta,

If you know what that is.

Bodhi meaning awakened and citta meaning heart-mind.

We're simply just tuning into or attuning to a heart-mind that wishes to see ourselves and others free,

And we wish to take on that responsibility.

So just let your awareness settle into the body and attune to that for a moment.

You can think it out a little bit,

But at some point I want you to drop the thinking into the body.

Don't worry if you got the right thing or not.

Just try to feel.

Bodhicitta has this quality of courage,

And also bittersweetness,

The sweetness of the possibility of awakening,

And our getting to know that and embody that more and more,

And the bitterness of seeing the vastness of samsara and its suffering nature.

But this bitterness doesn't prevent us from doing our work.

It actually only inspires us further.

So now we're going to imagine a mandala offering,

And here you can just imagine everything in the world that's beautiful to you,

Everything that you appreciate,

Everything that you treasure.

You can imagine this in the form of something beautiful,

Like a beautiful mountain of flowers,

A beautiful stream,

Wealth,

Delicious food.

Or if you'd like to form the traditional mandala,

You can just think of the entire universe stacked around a golden Mount Meru,

All the different god realms,

All of the realms of samsara,

And we're imagining them as a pure offering.

We're tuning into our appreciation.

We're tuning into our sense of also letting go.

All the beauty that we come into contact with,

Offering it up,

Letting it go,

Sharing it.

And we imagine sharing this first with the Buddha,

All enlightened beings,

And then sharing this with sentient beings.

And so we can chant while we imagine this on page 97,

Just the page before it,

On the bottom in English.

This ground anointed with perfume,

Strewn with flowers,

Adorned with Mount Meru,

Four continents,

The sun and the moon,

I imagine this as a Buddha field and offer it.

May all beings enjoy this perfect realm.

So from your heart,

Just imagine offering this to the Buddha.

He accepts it.

It fills him with bliss,

Not because he needs it,

But because he rejoices at our own generosity.

Same as you offer this to sentient beings,

Whatever they need,

You imagine that fills them up with joy.

And really working with this second immeasurable of sending them and offering them happiness free from the causes of suffering or offering them happiness and its causes.

And just feel what that's like to let go of that burden of needing to hold on to things,

Of needing to hoard them,

Of needing to make a distinction between mine and someone else's.

And with the Buddha still in front of us,

We're going to now open our mind toward the Dharma.

So when we request the teaching,

Actually,

The essence of it is not just requesting the teacher in the room,

But it's requesting all of the Buddhas,

All of the Dharma to turn within our life,

That we can be on a walk and suddenly we have an insight into something we've been studying,

Or we're having a really hard day and we just hear something in a grocery line that completely shifts our mood.

This is what we're requesting,

Not just formal Dharma.

We're requesting that the Dharma be turned in our mind as much as possible until we attain awakening,

Until our mind becomes Dharma.

So with that,

We'll recite the English on page 98.

And here we're requesting the Buddha specifically in front of us.

O holy and perfect pure Lama,

From the clouds of compassion warm in the skies of your Dharma-Kaya wisdom,

Please release a rain of vast and profound Dharma,

Precisely in accordance with the needs of those to be trained.

So make that a really genuine request from your heart.

And this could be something even just really simple,

Something you're having difficulty with right now and you want some insight in your life.

You want a little bit more of a shift,

A piece of wisdom to help you work with it,

All the way up to the Buddhist path as a whole and how that can unfold for us over a lifetime,

Over more than one lifetime.

So again,

Remembering here,

We're actually not requesting something we don't have a connection to.

We do.

We have Buddha nature.

We have the potential for awakening.

So we're simply requesting an activation of that,

Some help,

Some guidance.

And we're requesting to the Buddha in front of us and he feels extremely happy.

We can imagine he smiles,

Not because he has something special to say or not because he's really eager to tell us what we need.

It's because he knows just through our heart opening to the Dharma,

It's only a matter of time before we attain awakening.

So being open is really one of the key points to Dharma study and practice.

Aumen Chogiyengye Boromido Samsange Kuen Moen Yiran Samchong Sobe Lame Jambal Sowa Dev And so with that,

The Buddha,

Extremely pleased,

Dissolves into light.

Just imagine this light merging with your body and mind.

Just rest in that inseparability that now the Buddha is not separate.

Your mind and the Buddha's mind are mingling.

Just simply rest in that for a moment.

Without concept,

Just resting.

Don't proliferate a story about that.

Just feel.

Okay.

Thanks so much.

So you guys usually take a break around like an hour?

Yeah.

Okay.

Good.

Sometimes I do practices like that.

More and more these days my practice is more like that.

It's sort of like how to.

.

.

Of course we need some backup.

We need some view.

And I'm going to talk about view a little bit tonight.

View just means like where are we going?

And so we have some information like where do I want to go?

What is this?

What am I doing?

Right?

Otherwise it can be quite vague.

But once we get a little bit of that,

Or maybe a lot of that,

I think this is really important to make sure we're not cutting it off from experience.

So there's J.

Rinpoche and Lama Tsongkhapa in his middle length Lamrim.

He says it's a little bit silly to race a horse in a track that you're not going to.

.

.

Like you practice racing a horse in a track you're not going to race it on.

He said that's kind of silly.

You have to practice racing the horse on the same track that you're going to race it.

Right?

So you dig in from a neuroscience perspective.

We're creating those grooves and we're deepening those positive grooves in our cognition and brain.

So I always thought of this as.

.

.

We're constantly reworking and working over what we learn and we're bringing that into our heart.

We're bringing that into our experience.

I don't know.

I think just a bunch of knowledge is useful.

But if we're not integrating it into experience,

It's not that useful.

It just sort of makes.

.

.

It can make for.

.

.

Tibetans have a saying it can make for like a hard leather pouch.

Because they put.

.

.

I guess they put butter in an old Tibet in the pouch and then hold it and at a certain point if you didn't cure it correctly,

It becomes hard.

So I don't know about you,

But I've struggled with this throughout my Dharma practice.

Because I feel.

.

.

I don't know,

Maybe it's just me,

But I feel we have a very large emphasis on cognitive knowledge being from here up,

Right?

And sort of being something where you know it when you can speak about it really eloquently and backwards and forwards.

But we could know it without really knowing it,

Right?

We could know it without the experience developing.

So I like this idea of running on a track,

On the same track in the sense that even if we don't know that much,

We practice what we know.

And practice means not just thinking about it all the time,

Trying to bring it into the heart like we just did,

Right?

Which could be something really simple,

Just sitting with a sense of appreciation,

Sitting with a sense of offering.

Mandala is such a beautiful practice because actually what we're doing is we're letting go.

So every time we let go,

A little bit of our ego clinging also releases.

And from a Buddhist perspective,

If we want to essentialize the whole thing,

Ego clinging is what is the cause of suffering,

Right?

And we can frame that in many different ways.

Sort of misperception,

Marigpa in Tibetan we call it,

Avidya in Sanskrit,

Just this kind of not knowing,

Right?

So I like this idea of whatever little practice I'm doing or whatever I'm studying or thinking about or contemplating,

Put it into practice right away.

I remember one time I was,

When I first became a monk,

I really wanted to go to the monastery in India,

Like,

You know,

Become a Geshe and do all these things,

Which is a really wonderful thing to do.

You can benefit a lot of beings that way.

And welcome.

And then I didn't do that.

I went into retreat when I first became a monk.

It was Lama Zopa Rinpoche's advice.

But Lama Zopa,

Once I asked him,

Because I was just,

You know,

I really,

We prize,

When you really know the path quite well,

You can actually work a lot of the time on your own without needing to always ask or figure it out,

Because the Dharma becomes sort of in your mind and becomes one of your teachers.

And that's one of the real key components of doing some study and having a good understanding.

Otherwise we're confused a lot of the time,

And we always have to ask someone.

And that's not a bad thing.

It's just sometimes we don't have access to people,

Or really,

You know,

You do here.

You have Geshe-la-khams and dawn,

And so I think you do here,

But some people don't,

Right?

So I asked Lama Zopa because I was kind of like scared.

I was like,

What,

So,

What should I do?

Like,

I don't know enough,

You know.

There's so much to know.

There's so much to study.

There's so much to understand.

And he said,

He said,

The point is,

Whatever you know,

Whether you know a little bit or whether you know a lot is to put it into practice.

That's the point.

And so that always kind of,

This idea or these three wisdoms of listening,

Like we're listening now,

You know,

And again,

I didn't say this,

But I'll say it now.

Listening really the,

Usually they talk about these three vessels,

Right?

You all have heard this when you're studying and teaching of not being an upturned vessel,

A dirty vessel or a vessel with holes in it.

I'm usually guilty of the third one.

But what it really means is like,

I think for us,

A lot of the times culturally,

It means don't try to filter the teaching through your bias.

Just try to take it in really raw,

As raw as possible,

Right?

Even as raw as like,

There's this Tibetan saying of like,

Like a child looking at a painting for the first time.

They don't have a lot of concepts about it.

They just,

Whoa,

That's interesting,

Right?

So this really helps because then when we start to contemplate it,

That's when we work with that raw material.

We're trying,

You know,

We're actually,

There's some friction.

We're rubbing up against something that may not fit with our current belief systems,

Or we may not understand it fully.

And so that's the contemplation part.

And then by the time we put it in a meditation,

That's when we're bringing it into the heart,

Right?

Into experience.

But what I'm saying is like this horse running,

We try to do all three.

So anything I say tonight,

The first part is just us kind of discussing here and,

You know,

Coming together to talk about these things.

And so try to leave the mind unbiased.

Then you take it home,

You contemplate,

Then you meditate on it,

Right?

And even if it's just one little thing you got out of it,

That's incredibly precious.

I know there's a famous quote,

But I forget it now.

It's something like,

You know,

We have like an abundance of information these days,

But very little wisdom.

And Buddhism has the remedy to that.

It has the remedy if we work with it.

We work with these three wisdoms,

Listening,

Contemplating,

And meditating.

And we don't wait to meditate until we've listened to everything.

That doesn't work.

I tried it.

It works,

I think,

In old Tibet,

Like some styles of academic learning in the monasteries,

They might do it that way.

I don't think it works for us so much as modern people.

We just don't have time.

You know,

We need to integrate.

We get a little piece,

We contemplate it,

And we integrate it right away.

It's really important.

So this piece on integration,

I'm going to talk more about that,

Because I think this is a really confusing one.

I don't know.

I'd like to hear from you all,

Maybe in Q&A.

But for me,

This has been a tough one,

Because,

Hmm,

What happens when we are a top-down culture?

Now,

Again,

I don't think any of you are.

I'm talking about,

You know,

People outside,

Right?

Only outside of this room.

But,

You know,

We could probably all agree we're generally a top-down culture,

Maybe not everywhere in the United States,

But I think it's just become part of the dominant education,

Dominant culture.

So how does this affect experience,

Right,

When we're only working with a top-down approach?

What's happening?

What's missing?

So I just want to leave that as an open question now,

And then we'll work through it in a moment.

So anyways,

Getting our topic tonight.

I mean,

That is part of the topic.

What I wanted to work with was really this view,

Meditation,

And conduct.

So I don't know.

Some of you may not be used to this framing of the Buddha Dharma.

The Gulluk tradition doesn't actually— they do use that framing,

But it's not as explicit sometimes.

But it's just a general framing of understanding what we want to do,

Where we're aiming,

What sort of trajectory or travel or path we're going to go on,

Getting used to that,

And then all of the components of bringing that getting used to into our lifestyle through conduct.

And so I like this framing because it kind of simplifies the path.

And again,

Each text can have its own view,

Meditation,

And conduct,

So it can be also complex.

I'm not going to present it that way tonight.

Each view,

Like if we look at— Tibetan Buddhism is really a three-yana approach to the Buddha Dharma.

For some of you who don't know that,

What that means,

Yana means a vehicle.

It's like what gets us to our destination.

And the three yanas that it integrates are the Shravakhyana or Hinayana,

The foundational vehicle,

The Mahayana and the Vajrayana.

And these are more— they're not steps as much as integratables.

So when someone's primarily working on the Vajrayana,

They're also working on their Hinayana conduct,

And they're also working on that view.

But each one has its distinct view,

But I'm not going to present them just because of time tonight.

But I just want to point that out.

But in general with Buddhism,

We could talk about a larger view,

Meditation and conduct,

And I like to talk about that in relation to the Buddha's life story,

And especially this famous moment when he became awakened under the Bodhi tree and touched the earth and the earth shook.

To me this is a— it really helps me to understand what we're not— we need some top,

We need some understanding.

But the Buddha just simply touching his hand to the earth and the earth shaking,

This is a big teaching in that,

Right?

It's a big teaching.

Because he didn't do it through words.

And actually what he said directly after that,

When the god Brahma came to say,

Hey,

You've got to do something,

Man,

You can't just sit here and meditate under a tree,

Right?

He also said something that he did say some words,

But it was also kind of a no.

And in that no,

There's a big teaching.

So I want to talk about that.

But you all know,

Everybody knows the Buddha's life story,

More or less?

Yeah?

Anybody not know it?

No?

Or you don't want to say you don't know it?

It's okay.

So basically we have a young man,

Right,

Who took the aspect of being confused,

Essentially,

You know,

Showing an aspect of not being—something's wrong.

He knew there was something more to life.

He knew there was more meaning than just enjoying,

You know,

His economic favor,

Enjoying all the pleasures that could offer him.

And he knew that.

And there was something—and I don't think,

You know,

Just as a story,

I view the Buddha's life story,

By the way,

As,

Sure,

I'm sure maybe it could be literal.

I don't view it as that,

And I don't think that's a problem.

I think this is kind of,

Again,

An element of top-down approach to the world where we get literal too much.

We lose myth as a form of myth not meaning it didn't happen,

Right,

But myth meaning it became bigger than what it was.

And that's fine.

A lot of—I mean,

You all probably know him living in Taos,

But indigenous communities relate to the world this way.

They don't relate in literalisms often.

And I find this to be a much more heartfelt way of relating to the world.

It's something I'm trying to get back.

Now,

It may not make a great,

You know,

Toilet that can flush,

You know,

A million times.

My teacher,

Soniram Shehiyo,

He says,

If you can just take German head and Nepali heart and put them together,

You'd have like the perfect culture.

Because Nepal,

He says,

No problem is the problem.

So things don't work so well like as the United States,

But they also are a little bit more emotionally okay.

I mean,

That's changing now,

But in general.

Everything works,

But then everything works,

Then we're left kind of still,

Oh,

What do I do now,

Right?

And then we get into trouble,

Right?

At least I do.

So this kind of fundamental ground of not being settled,

I think the Buddha just experienced that.

That's kind of our fundamental human condition if we want to simplify it.

You know,

We just deal with hope and fear.

We deal with,

You know,

Something goes right,

And then there's the fear of that going wrong.

Something's going wrong,

And then we're hoping for something to go right.

And hope maybe is not the best word.

I like to use the word expectation now,

Because there's also a positive hope.

There's a constructive hope.

But when hope is expectation,

It creates a lot of pain,

Right?

At least it does for me.

So I think the Buddha's experienced this within,

You know,

Maybe myth is a strong word,

But now you know what I mean by myth.

I don't mean it didn't happen.

I just mean it became bigger,

Right?

So within the myth of the Buddha's life,

This is how it's being represented to us.

We're not unlike the Buddha,

Right?

We all have our stories of going through life and facing aversion,

Facing craving,

You know,

Facing where just something doesn't feel right.

Yeah?

We're trying to find well-being,

We're trying to find happiness,

And we think we got it,

And then something shifts.

And of course,

This is fundamental to the first noble truth of Dukkha that the Buddha eventually taught,

But it's really embodied in his life story.

So as we know,

He kind of went through seeing these four great rivers of birth,

Old age,

Sickness,

And death,

You know,

Where his father didn't want him to see that,

But he did.

And this triggered a past what we call bakchak in Tibetan,

Or an imprint,

Right,

A karmic imprint or some kind of merit for him to then want to seek the sannyasin lifestyle,

Or a lifestyle of a mendicant,

Which he did.

He left the palace,

Right?

And then he also found out,

Okay,

This is an extreme as well.

You know,

It wasn't exactly the right hit,

Working with more extreme yogic practices.

And so he went to sit alone under a bodhi tree,

As the story goes,

And look at his mind,

Right?

And so upon all of what went forth and all of the battles he had to go through with Mara,

Which is his own mind,

Right,

Mara being an expression of the last vistitudes of confusion,

Essentially,

Right?

And we have Mara taking different forms,

And for me it's the same,

You know?

Sometimes Mara takes the form of a beautiful sky that I get to attach to,

Or Mara takes the form of someone flipping me off in downtown Manhattan,

Or whatever,

Right?

That doesn't really happen that much these days,

But maybe it's like a biker,

Yeah,

A bike going by and getting upset because I'm in the bike lane.

So we all have our Maras that we work through,

And the Buddha essentially saw through to the essence of what these Maras were,

Which were his mind.

There was no external Mara.

It was his mind.

So in essence,

This is our job as well.

But anyways,

So the Buddha,

As we know,

Became awakened in this last part of the morning,

Right,

Before the sun comes up,

And he touched the earth,

And the earth shook,

Like I said.

To me,

This is like,

Hmm,

It's not only a precious thing for me personally these days to reflect on this because it brings me back to body.

It brings me back to also this notion that awakening is not separate from appearance.

It's not separate from what exists around us.

And it's also a very kind of embodied thing.

I mean,

It feels good to touch the earth,

Right?

What does it,

You know,

When you touch the earth,

It feels kind of home.

For me at least,

It feels like that,

Yeah?

And so,

And the home responded to him,

Apparently,

In the myth,

Right?

It wasn't just,

Hey,

I'm home.

The home responded because the home knew what this meant,

Right,

And that this awakening of the Buddha was something also way beyond any kind of idea or concept or any way we can put it into words.

We try in Buddhism,

You know,

We frame it all in these ways.

Let's be honest.

You cannot describe that.

It's beyond description,

Yeah?

So,

I mean,

Again,

We can point to it,

But that's about it.

But until we know it,

We won't know.

So I find this incredibly powerful as a way to,

Again,

Remember what we're doing with our past,

Shifting the experience.

We're essentially trying to bring what we're doing into more and more of these earth-touching experiences.

So the Buddha had this major one.

We also have lots of minor ones all the time,

Right?

Something shifts.

We've been going through a hard time,

And suddenly little something small shifts,

And,

Whoo,

Oh,

What was that,

Right?

And as a Buddhist,

Those are the opportunities to notice.

As a sentient being,

Which I like this term droa samchen in Tibetan,

It means like a mover.

That's literally what sentient being means,

Someone who moves.

So what does a mover do with that?

They think,

Oh,

Oh,

Oh,

Wow,

Relief.

And then they think,

And then we hold on to that relief,

And then it changes,

Right?

So as a Buddhist,

Part of our job is to let that kind of resounding shift last as long as possible.

So we're going to talk about that a little bit too after the break,

Probably,

If I remember it.

So anyways,

After this experience of the Buddha touching the earth,

The earth shook.

To me,

I'm still trying to understand the profundity of that,

To be honest.

I don't think,

I don't know,

There's something about that that really hits me these days.

But anyways,

After that,

Like I said,

The Buddha was approached by the great Brahma,

Which again is a sign of what this really means,

To attain awakening,

What the power of this actually is,

Because Brahma is this big,

Big deal guy.

It's like the president,

I don't know these days,

But the president of the United States kind of coming and telling you,

Wow,

And now I come to my home and do this,

Right?

So anyways,

As we know,

For some of you who know the story,

Brahma asked him to teach.

He said,

Now can you come help?

Can you do something?

And there's different translations of this,

But this is the one I tend to use and like.

So what the Buddha said was,

Profound,

Peaceful,

Beyond constructs,

Luminous and unconditioned.

I've found a nectar like dharma.

Whomever I teach it to will not understand,

So I will stay silent here in the forest.

Right?

I'll read it one more time.

Profound,

Peaceful,

Beyond constructs,

Luminous and unconditioned.

I've found a nectar like dharma.

Whomever I teach it to will not understand,

So I will stay silent here in the forest.

So the Buddha's first teaching was to say no.

So I think what we'll do is take a break and then we'll get into that no.

Yeah?

Sound good?

On the 13th,

If anybody wants to jump in for that.

Just give me five seconds.

All right.

I'm all full of kiss,

Chocolate kisses.

I could not say no to those.

So,

By the way,

I'd like to leave some time just to discuss back and forth.

I find that sometimes I even start like that just with new groups just to get to know each other.

But anyways.

So getting back to kind of your meditation and conduct and just around these words of the Buddha,

Right,

This kind of no,

Which was a different kind of no.

And this is the way I wanted to talk about view a little bit tonight.

We don't have time to unpack it a ton,

But like I said,

View in this context means what we're getting used to,

What we're doing.

What are we trying to bring about in our life?

Or what are we trying to have a deeper understanding of?

Right?

So,

In this sense,

The Buddha presented the entire view of Buddhism,

Actually,

Within a short statement.

And what he was doing was describing in words which is indescribable,

So he was trying to describe what awakening is,

Right?

And all he could use was these descriptors of being profound,

Right?

Being peaceful.

We'll come back to that word.

Being beyond constructs,

Which starts to get a little bit closer to what the experience of awakening actually is.

Being luminous,

Right?

It's not nothing.

It's luminous.

And being unconditioned.

There's nothing that can create awakening.

So this is a tricky thing,

And there's a lot of debates among different schools on this,

Too.

Can enlightenment be created,

Right?

Because we're talking about something that's beyond constructs.

It's not conditioned,

So can you create it?

So it brings in some really interesting,

I think,

Contemplations.

And then the Buddha said,

I've found a nectar like dharma,

Which was referring to the nectar of the fruition.

He found the fruition of the dharma,

Right?

Which has led to this sense of profoundness,

Peacefulness,

Beyond constructs,

Unconditioned,

Luminous,

Et cetera.

And then his last statement is,

Basically,

It's not a no because he doesn't want to do it.

He just doesn't think people are going to get it,

Right?

It's this experience that's beyond concepts.

It's beyond constructs.

It's not something you can buy.

It's not something you can even create.

Now,

I want to say one thing there,

Because it's a little controversial to say that.

Some of you may be wondering what I mean by that.

So we have to,

Right now where we're at,

Our only choice is to sort of create something,

Right?

Because we are stuck with our conceptual mind.

We're stuck with duality for the time being.

So we have to do something,

Right?

We engage in chanting.

We engage in offerings.

We engage in meditation.

We engage in study.

But what the Buddha is saying is that is not the thing itself.

That's merely the path to the thing,

Right?

The thing itself is unconditioned.

I often think of this as like we kind of have no choice but to use better concepts to help reduce concepts that are causing overt suffering.

So that's the start,

Right?

And that has to do with the conduct.

We're really watching how do I behave?

How am I using my body,

Speech,

And mind?

And I want to say one thing here that we often,

At least I ignored for a lot of years,

It also means towards ourself,

Right?

So how is our speech and self-talk towards ourself,

Let alone our talk towards others?

How do we relate to our bodies?

Also,

How do we relate to the bodies of others?

And how do we relate to mind,

Right?

Our mind and also the way others feel and think.

So how do we use our body,

Speech,

And mind?

So anyways,

The Buddha,

Whomever I teach it to will not understand,

So I will stay silent here in the forest.

This is,

You know,

To me one of the most profound things the Buddha actually taught,

Right?

We have,

You know,

The Heart Sutra where he makes it more evident what he's describing here,

Or at least a way towards what he's describing.

But really here he's just saying,

At the end of the day,

We just need to do it.

And we need to drop.

We need to drop the confusion that we're having,

Right?

So to me,

This is the biggest view.

It's the underlying view that not only this being the nature of reality,

The nature of when mind experiences itself and experiences its own nature,

Or experiences the emptiness of mind,

Is another way to put it,

But at the same time,

It's really a descriptor of what we fundamentally are.

And so how I normally talk about view is the view of Buddha nature,

Right?

So some of you may be familiar with this term,

Tatagata garbha in Sanskrit.

It basically means our potentiality for awakening,

That we have the very seed for the thing we want.

And if we didn't have the seed,

We wouldn't be able to get it.

So when we study Buddhist philosophy,

Effect has to be in accordance with cause.

You can't have something that's just random or out of nowhere.

And so again,

Just something food for thought.

You've got to think on that a little bit,

Contemplate on that.

Can there be some kind of effect that is unrelated to its cause?

And so we take that logic and we apply it also to mind.

We apply it to meditative experience and the path.

So.

.

.

So understanding this view of Buddha nature is also an element of confidence.

It's an element of appreciation.

I was talking to someone about it the other day,

And it's this notion that we're kind of connecting to an idea that we don't feel yet.

So necessarily,

Maybe some of you do,

But I know I didn't for a lot of years.

Like,

Sure,

Okay,

Yeah,

I have this Buddha nature.

But what does that mean?

And I don't feel like I have Buddha nature.

I feel like,

You know,

A lump of,

You know,

Poop or whatever.

Not every day,

But some days.

So it's kind of this,

Again,

This concept that we bring into our awareness.

We can't really contemplate it so much,

But I do think we can start to attune to it a bit more through the practice of meditation,

Through the practice of awareness.

That's what actually connects us with our Buddha nature.

In a way,

I like to talk about Buddha nature in the sense that it's the teaching that we are originally okay,

You know?

Rather than the pervasive drum of you are screwed up and you need to somehow improve.

Now,

We have that in Buddhism too.

It's part of the Hinayana view,

Where we understand part of our experience of how we experience self as full of kleshas,

You know,

Full of these disturbing emotions or aversion,

Craving,

Ignorance,

Pride,

Jealousy,

All these things.

But the Buddha is saying,

That's not who you are,

Right?

But it's happening,

So we have to address it with foundational conduct,

Foundational view.

But really it's this getting used to this idea that this view that we are fundamentally pure.

And purity here,

It can have a difficult translation into Western culture,

Because sometimes we take the idea of purity meaning.

I mean,

There is a definition of this in the dictionary.

Purity meaning like above something else,

Right?

And then there is people and other things that are impure.

But here,

There's also a definition in the Western kind of lexicon,

And it's very in line with the Buddhist definition of what purity is or daknang we call it,

Is purity being something that's not stained with anything.

It's just completely clear,

Completely luminous.

So,

When the Buddha described Buddhahood or enlightenment as luminous,

That's the purity he's describing.

Now,

What he didn't say,

But is implied in Buddha nature teachings,

Like in Maitreya's teachings on Buddha nature and Asanga,

This luminosity is also part of our experience.

It's not something foreign.

It's just covered over right now.

So,

Maitreya uses all these examples,

Like the dross and gold.

We can use the example of like a mirror that's been sort of covered over by something or by dust,

But it didn't impede the mirror at all.

The mirror is the mirror.

The gold within the dross is still gold.

It doesn't affect the gold.

When you remove the dross and you connect with the gold,

That's what it is.

When you remove the covering on a mirror,

You connect with the mirror.

The mirror still has the potential to reflect totally purely.

So,

There's a lot of examples like that we use to reflect on our own nature,

Our own mind.

But it's tricky,

Because if we're having the perception,

I'm this,

You know,

Poopy person.

For lack of a better word,

I can't think of a better word.

I'm this poor person,

You know,

With all these problems,

With all these burdensome thoughts and blah,

Blah,

Blah.

And I'm not saying those problems aren't real.

Some of them are real.

You're dealing with them.

We have to treat them as real.

But they're also not true.

And so,

By not seeing,

By consistently opening into an inquiry about that,

And then opening through the meditation of awareness,

We start to connect with our Buddha nature.

So,

It starts with a little bit of a doubt,

Right?

So,

The view portion is just starting with a doubt.

Maybe I'm not this screwed up person,

Right?

Or maybe I'm not who I think I am.

And then we start to explore other aspects.

We start to remind ourselves of the open heart we have with our family members or those moments when we can just be generous spontaneously or any kind of moment where we really can connect with the beauty of our heart and see that.

I know for me,

I'm my biggest critic.

So,

It's hard for me to remember the moments of my heart and the beauty of my heart.

And so,

In here,

We're noticing that,

But not with a sense of pride,

Just with a sense of basic confidence that doesn't make us better or worse than anyone else.

It just makes us alive,

Awake,

Connected,

Interconnected.

So,

Buddha nature is,

You know,

Ultimately when we talk about Buddha nature,

It's not a thing.

You know,

Buddha nature can be synonymous sometimes with Shunyata or emptiness,

But it also has this quality that the Buddha described of luminous.

It's not nothing,

Right?

Nobody ever in Buddhist philosophy says emptiness is nothing or Buddha nature is nothing.

The problem is when we reify that Buddha nature,

We start to mistake what is our own projection,

What is our own appearance for something else.

We start to mistake other for something else than our own experience.

And so,

At this point,

We not only need the view,

But we need the meditation,

Right?

So,

We're still within view,

Meditation,

And conduct.

Now,

There's lots of different kinds of meditation.

Like I said,

Within the foundational vehicles of Buddhism,

Some people don't like the term Hinayana,

But I'm basically just using it here to mean foundational,

Not lesser,

Right?

Just foundational.

That's all I mean.

And so,

We have the foundational perspectives of how to meditate.

We're using the,

Like,

Let's say,

The four foundations of mindfulness,

Right?

We're starting to gain some connection with not consistently only projecting our body experience,

Consistently only projecting our emotional tones or our thoughts or how the phenomenal world appears to us.

So,

As we start to see a little bit more of a unification,

We start to see in meditation a little bit more of what consists of our experience.

And we start to have a little bit more of a unification.

Now,

It's a tricky thing to describe this because we're not looking for checking out here when it comes to meditation.

We're not looking for,

What's the word?

Peace is a tricky word here when the Buddha used it because we might think of that as,

Like,

Calm,

That duh has no problems,

That is sort of like a little bit aloof,

That kind of thing.

But the Mayana perspective says,

No,

No,

No,

You can't have that,

Right?

Why?

Because we start to recognize more and more this sense of interconnectedness with all beings,

With the world.

We start to recognize more and more a sense of altruism,

A sense of responsibility.

And we start to influence our awareness that way.

So,

The awareness practice I'll talk about,

And then we'll kind of do a really brief practice on it,

Is just simply being present to everything that's arising.

So,

Sometimes we might use the breath as a practice of awareness,

An object to sort of tie the awareness to,

And we're writing that object in order to accumulate more of a calm abiding,

So there's a stability.

It's a little bit like a glass of muddy water,

And we're just putting it down,

Right?

And then over time,

The mud will start to,

The silt will start to fall to the bottom.

Then we have the practice of vipassana,

Right?

Vipassana awareness,

Which is actually getting really interested in,

Okay,

Well,

Now I have this glass that's a little more clear,

I'm starting to feel or connect with my Buddha nature a little bit more,

But there's still all this crap in the bottom.

So,

We need vipassana.

We need vipassana to have the insight to cut through the projection and illusion around that mud,

Right?

So,

We're not going to talk about that so much tonight,

But I really like just an awareness practice of simply resting in the body,

Just allowing,

Allowing experience to take place.

We need a little bit of concentration for that.

So,

This is a little bit different than a single-pointed concentration practice.

If we think about it,

Single-pointed concentration,

All it is there for is to grow a serviceable mind.

That's it.

To grow a serviceable mind so we can understand and have insight into what that mud really is.

Mud meaning all of how we take self to be,

How we take our emotions to be,

How we take our thoughts to be,

Et cetera.

But I like awareness practice of just simply just resting.

Just be in your body,

Be with sound,

Don't block anything.

Just simply be awake,

Be aware.

And this is not easy in the beginning,

But over time what happens,

Not only does the mud begin to settle,

Not only can we start to have some insight into what that mud is and the nature of it exponentially because we start to see,

Oh,

Okay,

There's a little bit of an experience where I'm taking this as self,

But it's not feeling so much like self anymore.

It's just feeling like something in my orbit.

So,

It's not that it goes away.

It's still there.

Anger is still there for us in the beginning at least.

All these clashes are still there,

But we start to shift our relationship.

We shift our relationship with them.

So,

Here meditation is the path that brings about a connection with our Buddha nature because what is our Buddha nature?

It's something that is not bound by constructs like the Buddha said.

It's unconditioned.

It doesn't have this as much of a subject,

It doesn't have at all a subject-object relationship with things.

It starts to transcend that.

But what does this look like?

What's this experience like?

Again,

Because tonight I didn't want to go so much into philosophy.

We can talk about emptiness in a lot of different ways,

But then we just sometimes end up in mental gymnastics.

That has its place,

Right?

Like I said,

It has its place to then bring it into contemplation and then meditation.

But sometimes it's just very useful just to drop in,

Not try to change or modify anything.

Just drop in and be aware.

So,

You guys interested in practicing that for a few minutes?

Yeah?

Okay.

Okay.

So,

Just connect to an open heart for a moment.

We're just going to do a few minutes because I want to discuss a little bit together.

You can close your eyes or leave them open.

If you're going to close them,

I recommend leaving them open a little bit.

So,

Just because the whole idea here is we're not going to block our senses.

It's different than single-pointed concentration.

And I just want you to try to be.

Don't do anything.

Don't try to meditate.

Don't try to construct an experience.

Don't try to run from what you're feeling right now.

Just be with whatever's arising.

So,

We need a quality of awareness that turns toward our experience,

Be it a sound,

A sight,

A feeling in the body,

An emotion in the body.

You're not focusing on it.

You're simply just being aware.

And really,

There's only a few rules here.

Try not to move.

Try to just stay for a few moments.

And don't try to change that experience.

Don't try to have insight into it or try to figure it out.

Don't analyze it.

Just be aware of it.

And if it's hard for you,

Just place your awareness on sound.

Just be aware of sound.

Be aware of body.

That's it.

Drop your expectations.

And if you can,

Let your awareness become more and more vast in the sense that you're just open to all of your experience.

Thoughts are allowed to arise,

They're allowed to abide,

And they're allowed to cease.

Smells,

Tastes,

Sensations,

Sound,

Everything's allowed.

There's a great Zen master,

Suzuki Roshi,

Who some of you may know of.

He has this great quote,

When we meditate,

We leave all of our windows and doors open.

We don't block anything.

So anything can really come inside,

But we don't serve them tea.

So let thoughts arise,

Let them pass.

But be aware.

Let sound come and go.

Let body sensation come and go.

Try to meet your experience like a baby or a young kid looking at a painting for the first time.

Fresh.

Okay.

So this is a really simple practice.

It's one of my main practices.

It kind of straddles the shamatha vipassana world.

Sometimes you'll be in shamatha,

Sometimes you'll end up in a vipassana practice.

You might start to have some insight into something.

You might notice a sense of this reified-ness of who you are and how you're mind and me start to loosen a little bit,

Right?

Or you might just settle the mind through shamatha,

And that's totally fine too.

Either way,

You're going to start to sense,

If you haven't already,

More and more of this quality of your Buddha nature,

Which is really nothing whatsoever,

But it has this quality of knowing.

It has this quality of being alive,

Being awake,

Being aware.

And it's not that hard.

I don't think it's that hard,

Actually,

To get a taste of this.

Even when we do some shamatha,

Where we're just doing kamma-biting practice and we're just doing kamma-biting practice,

That's a sign that we have Buddha nature.

Meaning,

If the thoughts didn't settle,

It would mean they were an inherent or innate part of our nature,

But they're not.

And I'm not saying thoughts in general as a phenomena.

I mean the thoughts of how we identify with ourself or how we identify with the phenomena.

When those loosen a little bit,

We start to see,

Oh,

There's a little gap,

Right?

So to me,

These are really precious things to start paying attention to.

I'm not saying new things,

I think,

To a lot of you.

I'm just kind of angling a little bit differently to start to see how can we appreciate these moments?

How can just as many moments as we think,

You know,

And again,

This may be me and all of my,

You know,

Jewish guilt and all that,

I don't know.

But,

You know,

Those moments of where we just think I'm this bad person and I've done this and I've done that and blah,

Blah,

Blah,

Right?

So at least we should be equally connecting with that I'm inherently innately okay,

I innately have Buddha nature.

As much as we connect with I'm this screwed up person,

I want you to do that.

At least 50-50.

Does that sound good?

And in the beginning here,

We are kind of,

The idea that we have Buddha nature is still an illusion.

It's still a concept,

But it's a very,

Very healthy concept because it's in line with reality.

It's in line with how things actually are from a Buddhist perspective.

So with that,

That's kind of the basic conduct we can start engaging in.

Again,

Conduct,

Just like view and meditation,

It's a lot of facets,

Right?

I'm not presenting a huge breath on it.

But the conduct can be really simple,

Which is how are you integrating the view we talked about of Buddha nature,

This view of the Buddha describing his awakened state,

How are we integrating that with this awareness meditation throughout the day and into our life?

And that's the conduct,

Right?

Because when we have awareness,

We know acutely,

We know what's causing it.

We start to,

And we have to learn a little bit,

Like negative karma,

Positive karma,

That kind of thing.

It's very helpful.

But we know.

I think we know when something went wrong.

We know when we hurt someone,

Yeah?

If we have awareness.

When we drop the awareness,

Oh,

You can become,

You know,

Anybody,

Actually.

So,

Awareness is the key.

Because I know for me,

It's sort of like,

Ethics are something we take on.

Conduct is related to ethics,

To Buddhist ethics.

It's something initially we do have to take on.

We do it kind of artificially.

We take on vows.

We decide I'm going to do this,

And I'm not going to do this.

And this is really helpful to work with our confusion.

But eventually,

When we connect more with our nature,

We just start to see more and more what's in a line and non-alignment.

We start to see,

Okay,

That didn't feel so good,

Right?

And we start to question why.

So,

This is where I'm getting into a little bit of territory of can conduct also be an inquiry-based practice?

Because the Buddhist path,

It's essentially the way I've been trying to describe it tonight.

It's a path of inquiry.

It's not a set of beliefs,

Though there are beliefs involved.

But the point of those beliefs are to go beyond the beliefs.

It's the only tradition I know that does that.

Most things they want you to believe to believe.

Buddhism just gives you temporary beliefs,

Like Buddha nature.

It's a belief for us right now,

Let's be honest,

Right?

But the belief itself is a temporary one to help you go beyond the belief completely.

That's what he meant by beyond constructs,

Right?

Beliefs is part of constructs.

So,

Integrating this,

We need some help.

We need some basic structures.

We need to try to work to limit and reduce and eliminate the ten non-virtues in our life.

Not harming people through our body,

Not harming people through our speech or our mind.

But while we're doing that,

You can also make it a very beautiful inquiry-based practice.

For me,

My first three years as a monk were really hard because I treated it very dogmatically.

Like,

These are rules and I can't break them.

And then I started to realize,

No,

This is a practice for me.

Sure,

There are rules,

And if you break one thing,

You're not a monk anymore.

A few things.

But they're also a boundary.

They're a way to work with one's mind.

And so,

It started to become like a laboratory for me,

Rather than a prison.

It started to become a space where I could start to understand,

Okay,

This feels good and this doesn't feel good.

So,

That's helpful.

That's why we take vows.

That's why we avoid things like the ten non-virtues in our conduct.

Because they give us some clue,

Ah,

Okay,

That's not working so well anymore.

But what does it also do?

What's the underlying thing?

Is it just to keep the vow and to be a good Buddhist?

No.

Awareness.

So,

This is what Buddhist mindfulness looks like.

The more we watch our conduct,

The more awareness we cultivate,

The more mindfulness we cultivate.

I know for me,

It's the single most thing that helps me with my mindful awareness.

It's not just,

I mean,

I taught you this practice now,

But that practice is a means to help us also come into more sane,

More healthy,

More interdependent,

Interconnected conduct with others and with ourselves.

So,

I think when we treat it like that,

To me,

It feels so rich,

It feels so loving.

I mean,

Even just talking about it now,

I feel really like chills and it fills my heart.

Because it's this idea that like I'm not the most important person in the world,

You know,

Contrary to what I normally believe.

And at the same time,

A deep recognition of like when I harm another,

Even in a subtle way,

Like being a little bit aggressive with someone or something,

It's harming me,

So it just circles right back and forth.

And these are principles that I think,

Yes,

We can make some constructs around them and beliefs and kind of religious ideas and vows.

These are just fundamental to existence.

So,

The Buddha was incredibly kind to do this for us because it helps to give us a clue.

It helps to give us some way in the door.

So,

Just to wrap up and then I want to hear from you all is,

You know,

View,

Meditation,

And conduct,

We're really doing them together,

Right?

We're consistently reflecting on this view.

We're bringing it into action through meditation.

Or,

Sorry,

We're getting used to it through meditation.

And then through conduct,

We're integrating,

Right?

There's a few things I wrote down to see if I forgot what to say.

Hmm.

So,

Another way to think of conduct here is integrating a recognition and awareness of our Buddha nature into life.

Right?

That's what I've been describing,

Just to kind of sum it up.

So anyways,

That's all I got.

Yeah,

Maybe we can turn the lights on.

Like,

Turn these big ones on.

Can we put that one in?

Yeah,

Perfect.

Yeah,

That's good.

Now I can see your beautiful faces.

So what do you got?

We got a few minutes to chat.

Any questions or just anything you want to discuss more?

Yeah.

Well,

I don't know.

But I just,

What I kept thinking about when you were saying that integration is when I first came to Buddhism and I first came to the center that was elsewhere,

I was going through a really traumatic time in my life,

So I was completely open to what I was hearing,

And I found that I just integrated it immediately.

It just was,

I was just so open to it.

And I'm grateful for that.

But as the years have gone by,

Less trauma,

Things are groovy.

But it's been integrated.

So sometimes I get frustrated.

I feel like,

Oh,

I'm not learning and all those things.

But I think depending on each person's life,

It can be integrated like that,

Or it can take a long time.

It's just a thought.

Yeah,

Thanks for sharing that.

Not a question.

You used the term we're a top-down culture.

What does that mean?

Well,

I mean,

It's also up for,

It's an opinion,

So it's up for meaning.

Maybe it's not capital T Truth.

But it means like a head approach to the world.

So I'll go into a little bit more detail.

It's hard because when you're in a top-down conditioning,

You don't know you're in a top-down.

It's sort of like you're in the water,

But you don't know you're in the water,

Right?

Then when you start to get out of the water,

You start to see the difference.

So what it means is primarily seeing and relating to the world through thought and analysis.

And so I know for me this has been a big struggle.

It's been something I've been conditioned by.

And what I've noticed,

Especially in Buddhism,

Is that's the way we'll also see Buddhism,

When actually a lot of Buddhism is talking about more than just thoughts and concepts.

So it's a tricky thing,

Yeah.

It's what I'm,

I'm an activist against that,

But not through making Facebook posts,

But through this.

You know?

That make sense?

So bottom-up would mean some cultures don't need to use the thinking mind as much.

We all need the thinking mind.

I mean,

It's not like you don't need it.

It's useful.

But when we're 90,

80%,

90% of the thinking mind,

There's a whole part of ourselves we're just cut off from,

Which is the world of feeling,

Which is the world of emotion,

Which is the world of nonconceptual knowing through feeling.

So feeling has,

This isn't a Buddhist principle now,

But at least I haven't read it in any text,

Feeling does have a type of knowing.

And other cultures can be more or less connected into that.

And we can too.

It's just sort of a conditioning where we can shift the process to more body awareness that develops a knowing in the body.

Are you talking about intuition?

It's not quite intuition.

Intuition is a component of it.

It's more a quality of,

Okay,

We could just say this,

Even just through the mind.

We don't have to talk about the body.

So in Buddhism,

We could really put the mind into four categories,

Thinking,

Knowing,

Awareness,

And clarity,

Clarity being the root of the relative mind,

Talking relative truth here.

And so knowing is a quality that we can naturally do where we can do it without thinking.

Like when we see a flower,

Or for instance,

When you see this microphone,

You don't have to think it's a microphone.

You just know it,

Right?

So there's a quality of the backdrop of mind.

It's connected to this term luminosity or luminous in what the Buddha said.

It has this connection where we can just know.

And then of course we can be aware of that and et cetera.

And so it's more like that.

But there's a type of felt knowing where we don't have to use the thinking mind all the time.

And so I think indigenous cultures typically have a bit more of a balance here.

And we're all indigenous to somewhere,

So we've had it at some point.

It's just when you condition,

When education system becomes about primarily dealing with the world through thinking,

We lose a connection to that.

And therefore we also lose a connection to a lot of healthy emotions and healthy base of what it's like to be in the body.

So what you're saying about knowing is,

I'm trying to understand what you're saying,

Is obviously not,

You know,

Because in Buddhism we're trying to deconstruct that knowing,

Oh,

It's a lamp.

It's,

You know,

That's really the whole interesting thing.

But you're talking more about maybe,

Are you talking about knowing the Buddha nature?

Like it's a knowing if we remove the other stuff?

Yeah,

I mean Buddha nature has its own knowing,

Capacity of knowing.

That would be the knowing of wisdom.

So it's a completely non-conceptual knowing that's happening.

That's a little different.

I'm just in the relative truth of like,

Yeah,

I'm in the relative truth of just,

I'll give you an example.

So,

You know,

For me sometimes now,

Because I practice this a lot,

Not always,

But when I'm kind of connected,

I can just choose not to be in my thinking mind.

It doesn't mean thoughts aren't going,

They're going.

Actually thoughts aren't a problem.

I mean Naropa has the famous quote,

Or Tolopa to Naropa,

He said,

Son,

It's not thoughts that bind you,

It's clinging that binds you.

So often in Buddhism we go against the wrong enemy,

Which is the thoughts.

Thoughts are not the problem at all.

Actually what happens when we do that,

We kind of end up usually kind of doing what's called,

They call it stupid meditation in Tibetan,

Where we just kind of zone out and we're just blank.

That's not what medit,

You know,

You all know,

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

So it's a quality where like I can just,

You know,

We can choose,

Like some moments I'm waiting for the subway and I'm just like,

Well I don't need to think right now,

So I can just feel,

Right?

And so feeling is a type of knowing too.

We can know the feeling of our feet touching the ground,

We can know the feeling of a sensation moving,

We can know the sound of a train coming by,

And we don't have to think.

My teacher,

One of my teachers says,

Or I say it this way,

But he said it a different way,

We think we need to think more than we need to think.

That's the way I would put it.

So it's like this framing or this,

It's really just a habit when we look at it.

It's this habit that,

Oh I'm bored,

There's nothing going on,

So I'm going to think.

So the mind is just conditioned towards that,

Which we can see is creating a lot of the disease and,

You know,

Disturbance for a lot of us,

Because it definitely raises the energy,

The prana in the subtle body,

And it triggers more anxiety,

More depression,

More self actually,

In my opinion.

So yeah,

So I'm a big fan of learning,

You know,

I teach somatic,

We didn't do it tonight,

But I teach somatic practices for just going more and more into the body,

Because we just need that so much.

It really changed my life doing this.

Sorry,

It was your question.

Is this answered?

No?

Yeah,

In the back.

Do you think that the thinking aspect is more related to linear as opposed to nonlinear,

Which is more feeling?

Yeah,

I think so.

Or nonlinear,

Organic,

Sensitive?

I think so,

Yeah.

Seems like that.

Yeah,

And I think this is where the Buddhist path has a real benefit,

Just even on a relative level,

Because it feeds an inquiry practice.

Because again,

Like a lot of what we're taking in through listening tonight,

I invited you into an inquiry,

Right?

I think I did.

I hope I said that.

And to me,

That's the most,

The power of the Buddhist path.

Sometimes it's tricky because like we start and we're really suffering,

And we just trade one belief for another belief,

And then hopefully through the power of the Dharma,

Maybe eventually we,

Something cracks,

And then we have to also drop the Buddhist beliefs.

You see what I'm saying?

So it's a little controversial to say that.

I like being a little provocative,

But I think you know what I mean.

And it's sort of like,

This is a big one,

Because I get a lot of questions from people around like karma and rebirth and stuff,

And a lot of people are like,

Ah,

You know,

I don't believe in that.

And I'm like,

Well,

So who cares?

Like,

Good for you.

Like,

So what?

I mean,

Is that going to stop you from meditating?

It shouldn't,

Because the whole idea is it's an inquiry-based thing.

No one's saying anybody has to believe in rebirth or reincarnation,

Or karma.

Actually,

Understanding in karma is a really difficult thing.

It's a very vast topic.

Actually,

It's much easier to,

For a teacher,

At least it's my experience,

To teach emptiness than to teach on karma.

It's much harder,

Actually.

It's an extremely hidden phenomena,

And it usually gets dumbed down.

Where actually karma is everything.

Our entire experience right now from a Buddhist perspective is just cause and effect happening,

Moving,

Changing,

And it's influenced by the past moment and the moments before it.

That's all it is.

But anyways,

So we have to do some inquiry into that.

Otherwise,

If it,

Like,

I think part of my,

I don't regret it,

Because it helps.

It's like we each get our own doorway where we go in,

And then we work with that,

You know,

And we shift over time.

But I kind of became a believer too quickly in Buddhism.

It was like,

Ah,

Yes,

I found something.

And that was useful,

But then I had to go through a lot of suffering of cracking through my own dogmatic responses to that.

And eventually,

I think,

You know,

I don't regret any of it.

I think it was the right kind of pathway for me.

But it's sort of like that.

It's painful in that way,

Because the ego just wants to keep hanging on and hanging on and hanging on.

And the dharma just keeps pointing to it like,

Let it go,

Let it go,

Let it go.

But just saying let it go doesn't work.

We have to do it.

And that's the painful part,

Because the rug is constantly shifting from under us until we realize,

I don't need the damn rug anymore,

Right?

But anyways,

I think I went too much.

I often do that.

Can you talk a little bit about where thoughts are coming from?

And also,

Are there any Buddha thoughts?

Buddha thoughts.

Buddha thoughts?

Yeah,

That's a good question.

Hmm.

I'll say this for you.

And for other people in the room,

If you want to kind of experiment with this.

Look at the mind and look where thoughts,

Are they coming?

Where are they coming from?

Where are they abiding and where do they go?

So I'll use it more as a question for you,

As a practice.

Of course,

There's a philosophical idea of where thoughts are arising from,

But it's more interesting to do that.

So check.

Do they arise?

Where do they arise from?

And so you can do it as a practice of awareness,

Turning the awareness towards the mind and just looking.

Oh,

Where are they coming from?

Where do they go?

Right?

That kind of thing.

As far as Buddha thoughts,

There's some talk like in the in the Gulluk tradition,

They don't talk about this as far as I know,

But in some other traditions,

They'll call it seeming thoughts an enlightened person can have.

So it's not like they're not thoughts in the sense of concepts for an enlightened being,

Supposedly.

They're not like they're not actively thinking,

But they have they know.

Right.

So I don't know if we'd call that thoughts,

But there's a knowing capacity.

So that's kind of one of the powers of an enlightened being is they have a full knowing capacity that can act and be very accurate without having to analyze the situation.

But I've heard some other teachers say there can be thoughts,

But I'm not sure because I might be mixing it up on levels of the path because some beings can gain a full recognition of emptiness,

But they're not a Buddha yet,

But they're still seeming thoughts and they're not attaching to those thoughts,

But they could also use their thoughts like in a positive way.

So that's a good question.

I don't have a hundred percent answer for you,

But it seems to me that what I first said,

That seems a little bit more probable that there's a knowing coming from the wisdom of the Dharmakaya and that's all you really need.

Right.

Gets a little bit at this.

I've been thinking this is totally my conjecture now,

So don't take it as anything scriptural or definitive.

This idea of like working more with the knowing as sort of body-based knowing,

Empathy knowing,

Intuitive knowing,

Less thinking knowing,

It kind of gives me more the idea of like,

Oh yeah,

That must,

There's a Buddha nature knowing too.

We don't have to be a Buddha to connect with that.

We can connect a little bit with that,

Like pieces of it.

It's just not sustained for us over long periods of time.

That takes practice.

And so it kind of gives me the clue that,

Oh,

There is a kind of,

It gives me confidence.

There's a kind of knowing and then of course a compassionate action that can come from that knowing that's not a thought.

Is that the same as omniscience?

Not in my case,

But yeah,

When it's fully realized,

When it's fully brought to fruition,

Yeah,

It's one of the factors of omniscience because you have omniscience as knowing the nature of all phenomena and then knowing like their specificities.

So yeah,

That second one I think would be more in that category.

Which kind of breaks it,

That alone,

Just thinking about it,

I love to think about those things because it breaks my concepts just right there because it's like,

Wow,

How could you know everything simultaneously?

Because for us it seems like you have to think about it and put it in categories and Google it and all that kind of stuff.

For a Buddha it's just instant and it's happening all the time.

So it starts to give you a clue into what the nature of reality actually is.

A lot of these things in Buddha Dharma,

They're pointing us towards the nature of reality again and again and again.

And not that that nature of reality is a,

It's not a void.

So it's also,

It's not a void,

It's not nothing.

It's full,

Right?

It's just not full of poop.

Sorry.

Sorry,

Am I going there tonight?

I have a question about that.

I always have a hard time with this concept of a human being able to be a Buddha.

We're told that a Tibetan sees a Dalai Lama as a Buddha,

Or a Dalai Lama so-called as a Buddha.

And I kind of get it in a sort of a knowing way,

But when I think of a Buddha I think of omniscience.

And I think of omniscience as a body-free thing.

Like there's no body in omniscience.

It's so limiting,

The body and the brain.

How can a human,

How can a Buddha come as a human?

I just,

I don't know,

It's really hard to wrap my mind about that.

I think it's good you're thinking about that.

Keep thinking about it.

Okay.

And then I would say connect with this,

Like connect with your practice more around awareness and try to have a taste of your Buddha nature.

It's just a small piece.

I'm not making out to be some big thing.

It's just a small piece of like a gap in between the solidity of who we think we are and how we're relating to our life and world.

But yet things are still there.

It's not that emptiness happens and then there's nothing there.

It doesn't block anything,

Right?

So we have to start to connect with that a little bit more in practice.

And then these kind of things,

It's not like they get answered,

But you have a little bit more insight into it like that.

But I mean philosophically,

You know,

We have the three bodies of a Buddha.

And so these three bodies,

You know,

The Dharmakaya,

Sambhogakaya,

And Armanakaya,

Sometimes we talk about four or five,

But basically there's those three categories,

Mind,

Subtle body,

And then more grosser body.

Dharmakaya is just expressive all the time.

It's just there.

It's the nature of reality itself.

It's the nature of that enlightened being's mind,

All enlightened beings' mind.

That in order to benefit others,

It manifests in different ways.

And so then you have subtler ways it manifests in Sambhogakaya forms and then more grosser ways in the Dharmakaya,

Which could be a human body,

Could be,

You know,

An animal body,

Could be a god body,

Could be an iPhone,

Could be a lot of things.

Dharmakaya emanations,

Actually one way we describe this world,

This world is the Dharmakaya emanation.

So this is real Vajrayana stuff now.

But it's just kind of we have to get out of our concepts.

Part of this is conditioning of materialism because,

Again,

Let alone a top-down approach,

We're very conditioned into a hypermaterialism,

A lot of us.

And so these things don't make sense because we're like we think of things as solid and material.

So we have to reflect on that a lot,

And then it becomes more open and more possible.

But as far as from my own experience,

I don't know.

I mean,

I'm just relating to it as things I've thought about and heard from my teachers and studied.

So my own experience is that honestly,

Like,

I mean,

There's the practice of guru devotion and guru yoga,

Which is one thing where you're actively practicing looking at someone with pure view.

It doesn't mean that person's a Buddha.

It just means you're practicing pure view.

That's the difference.

Can they be?

Definitely.

Sure.

Why not?

Not just the Dalai Lama and other teachers,

Even like – sorry,

I've got to be careful here.

Let's pick someone else.

Even Mike Pence could be a Buddha.

You don't know.

You really don't know.

I mean,

I'm not saying he is.

I'm just saying – No,

I know what you mean.

I mean,

I thought about that stuff.

Yeah.

But also sometimes we have to remember some things are training for the mind and then some things are – we don't know the actuality right now.

And then so we have to be careful because when we're training the mind,

We're training the mind.

It doesn't mean that's how it is.

We're just training our mind.

Right.

Right?

So I think sometimes we get mixed up in that.

Sorry,

What?

It's good to come back to that all the time.

Training our mind.

Exactly.

And not holding onto the concepts of is it the Dalai Lama or Buddha?

Exactly.

Otherwise we become like fundamentalist Christians,

Basically.

You know?

Seriously.

I mean,

Yeah.

It's kind of this delicate thing because we have to remember Buddhism is always pointing at the nature of reality.

It's always pointing at like what is going to liberate us from dukkha completely.

And then so that's the practice.

And a lot of it is like – just to bring it to something practical now based on your question – a lot of it is just like it's loosening us up.

I found the more rigid I get,

Usually the further away I am from results in my practice,

Where if there's more fluidity and openness happening – and I don't mean openness like whatever,

Man,

Like that kind of openness.

Openness with compassion,

Openness with some insight.

That's a good sign.

You know,

It ebbs and flows for a lot of us.

But when it's getting more and more rigid,

I don't know.

I don't know if it's going the right direction.

I can't speak for anyone else.

For me,

I know it's not.

Maybe one more.

You all okay?

Was there in the back?

You had something?

You were a monk for a period of time.

Yeah.

How are you no longer?

Oh.

Because a female goat ate my robes.

I'm joking.

No,

That was one of my teachers.

He – Tukusana Krimshe,

Who's a wonderful lama who's in Santa Fe,

Pamukandraling.

He showed up one time at a Shechen monastery,

Which was his monastery.

And the monks,

They have a chugu,

Which is the yellow robe they wear during Sojang.

And it was a Sojang day.

And he just came in his normal robes,

Just the red,

And he didn't have the yellow.

And Rabja Rinpoche,

Who's the head of the monastery,

Said,

Where's your chugu?

Where's your monk robe?

And he said,

A female goat ate it.

And all the monks laughed,

Because they knew what that meant.

Anyways,

I like that story.

Because sometimes we get so uptight about these things,

And Tibetans,

They can laugh about it a little bit.

Not to say it's,

Like,

Good to disrobe.

No,

It's good if you can stay a monk.

But also we can have some humor in our human experience,

Right?

So anyways,

Me personally,

There's a lot of different things.

Let's see.

I mean,

Just to put it briefly,

I'm going to talk about this tomorrow night,

I guess.

They asked me to talk about becoming a monk,

Being a monk and leaving,

I guess.

I don't know what to say,

But – so this will be a preview.

I loved it.

To me,

Being a monk was – I just want to preface it with this.

It's very much like being married.

It becomes your partner.

It becomes something you're working with.

You're going through ups and downs on a daily,

Weekly basis,

Just like we all do with our life.

So it becomes kind of a container,

Not just for your Dharma practice,

But a container for you as a human being.

At least that's how I experienced it.

And so it was like a partner,

A lover,

A great benefit to my life and my Dharma practice.

So – and at some point it started to feel incongruous,

Like the relationship was – there were some problems.

We weren't communicating as well anymore.

We were having arguments,

That kind of thing.

And the arguments were with obviously self with self,

Meaning I'm sort of working it out with myself.

And I think a lot of that had to do around isolation.

I wasn't living in monastic communities,

Which I would – I tell most new monastics now,

Don't live alone.

Live in a monastic community.

And so that's – if I have any regrets,

It's kind of one of those.

I wish I did spend more time in a community,

But also I wouldn't have been able to do as much retreat as I did.

I spent more time in retreat.

So that was cool too.

And so it's a combination of that,

A combination of just being a young man.

I was 28 when I started,

37 when I left.

Or was I young or 36?

I can't remember.

Anyways.

And so part of just wanting a relationship,

Wanting a life in that way.

And partly just I think the core of it was also just – it was a useful path for me.

And then it kind of was ready to move my path more into a householder connection with the Dharma.

So in – it depends on who you ask.

The way I view it now is we choose householder – as a householder,

We also have commitments and vows.

We have Pradyumoksha vows.

So we have training that we're engaging in.

And we can choose that.

And to choose that route of working with the Dharma,

We can choose a monastic route.

I don't think they're equal for every one person,

Meaning like it depends on us and what we need.

And so I think I just needed to change.

And as a teacher,

I wanted to relate a bit more to people on a – just like not a different level,

Like not being in a different lifestyle.

And yeah,

And it's always hard to see what was the right decision,

Because incredibly beneficial paths.

I mean,

If it's right for someone,

It's incredibly helpful.

It's basically like the real benefit is you get to practice – you get to do Dharma full time.

You get to study and have opportunities that most of us householders do not.

And you also strip away a lot of the distractions to practice.

But it depends how you want to practice.

Vajrayana Buddhism is a very beautiful jnana,

A very beautiful vehicle of Buddhism,

Because whatever your life,

You can do it.

It's more challenging in certain ways.

But yeah,

So I don't know if that answers your question,

But it's kind of – it's like a combination of those,

Yeah.

But yeah,

I don't know.

Reflecting now,

It's kind of – it feels good.

I don't know.

I think it felt complete,

Like,

Okay,

I did that,

And then I just continue my path how it is now.

I mean,

I think just to wrap up tonight,

Whether we're beginners on the Buddhist path or we've been doing this for a long time,

We really need a thirst for awakening.

And we really need to study and contemplate and meditate on what that is.

I presented like probably a pretty sloppy way of talking about awakening tonight.

But either way,

I hope there's a little bit of insight,

And I just encourage you,

For those of you who are still wondering what the Buddhist path,

What awakening means,

Keep going,

Keep reflecting on that,

Keep inquiring into that to grow that thirst.

I mean,

The thirst really starts – I was going to talk about this tonight,

But it went in a different direction.

The thirst starts with the first noble truth,

Really,

Really.

We can study all the highfalutin,

Tibetan Buddhist,

Manimaka,

Tantra,

Tara,

Sadhana,

Whatever,

And those are all wonderful and beautiful ways of engaging the Dharma,

But if we don't sit with suffering and chew on dukkha enough,

We won't gain a thirst for awakening.

I mean,

This is embedded in the Lam Rim,

Too.

The whole beginning of the Lam Rim is all about chewing on dukkha and the nature of what dukkha is,

You know,

Being dissatisfaction,

Suffering,

And all its elements and its gross perversion and its subtleties.

Just the very subtlety,

Some of you really want to get up right now,

Right?

I mean,

You know,

It hurts after sitting for a while.

This is dukkha,

Right?

So it's just the nature of our experience.

So we have to get some taste wanting awakening through understanding what our predicament is now.

Really important.

So for me,

That's the foundational thing of,

Like,

Whatever we're doing,

Grow that thirst of awakening.

And then,

Of course,

In a mayana path,

We're growing that and then recognizing that in connection with others.

Because awakening is this factor that,

Of course,

The first way we talk about it is eliminating dukkha,

Going beyond the dukkha.

So to me,

That's kind of the essence.

I feel that's using our perfect human rebirth well.

If we can just thirst for awakening as much as possible,

It's going to be easy to practice.

I think for me that when it gets hard to practice and when I get slack and I get lazy and I don't want to meditate,

Like,

You know,

Whatever,

It's because I'm not thirsting awakening in that moment,

Right?

So it's kind of we have to meditate enough and contemplate enough and study enough to get fed up with suffering.

But in that case,

We really have to understand the predicament.

Even dukkha,

It's a very profound teaching,

The first noble truth,

Knowing dukkha,

Because suffering is not an easy thing to understand from the Buddhist perspective,

Meaning when it gets subtle.

Because it's not just talking about like,

Oh,

I got sick or my day didn't go right.

No,

No,

No.

It's talking about that very fact that my mind would rather watch Netflix than meditate.

That's dukkha,

Right?

And again,

No judgment.

You know,

We're all trying our best.

But so we don't beat ourselves for that.

What we do is we check,

We inquire,

Hmm,

Poor guy.

That's how I talk to my poor guy.

Oh,

You want to watch Netflix?

Okay,

Okay.

But then awareness.

Watch how your mind is with Netflix.

Does it really make you happy or does it just keep me up till midnight and then I can't sleep?

Right?

I mean,

Anyways.

So maybe we'll stop here.

I went over time a little bit.

Maybe we'll dedicate the merit.

So I'm on page 99.

Can we,

We have some names.

Oh,

Yeah,

Great.

Does it?

So you can get awakened watching the life of the Buddha.

Cool.

Nobody wrote down names for September.

Except for what?

For September.

Oh.

We have names for August,

Which we can do that.

I think we did August.

Okay.

So I'll read out the names that we're,

Of the people and animals that we're going to dedicate tonight's teaching for.

And I'll stop at the end of each list.

And if you have a name of somebody,

You can just speak it or think it.

So for people with obstacles,

Caroline,

Alison,

Raymond Fink,

Diane,

And Claudia,

Justin Bailey,

Rudebay Allam,

Cheyenne Tierra,

Raquel,

Trevor,

Cardia Samu,

Jenny L.

,

Doctors Without Borders,

Jana Valey,

Jeff Collins,

Kelly,

Taram Atman,

Lauren,

Sean,

Sue Rabi.

And those people from the hurricane,

People from the hurricane,

Who are having obstacles to their wellbeing.

And then the people with illness,

Robin Edwards,

Leslie Jones,

Robin Carlson,

Ann Lewicki,

Cheyenne Tierra,

Jen Hull,

Rhonda,

Nancy,

Kate Nielsen,

Zeus,

Diane,

Katie Johan,

Russ,

Yeshe the dog,

Sandy Tatum,

Ben Demmon,

Stella,

Jane Kearns,

Diane Liljemin,

Alice,

Danielle Franken,

Mary Sue,

Taron,

Ben Demmon.

People who have recently died,

Elizabeth Orem,

Roy Whiteman,

Ernestine Romero,

Jesse Suacido,

Johnny Clegg,

Tony Morrison,

El Paso victims,

Dayton victims,

Virginia Bodnar,

El Paso shooters,

Richard creatures in the Amazon fire,

Animals killed in recent flood in Kauai,

Patrick Larkin.

That one,

T.

L.

L.

Bergner,

Right?

Patrick Larkin.

Okay.

Maybe we say a few monies?

We just usually dedicate?

We usually have a set of things,

But we can do monies.

Yeah,

Let's do a few monies.

So we'll say,

Om Mani Pe Me Hum,

The mantra of the Buddha of compassion,

As a way to accumulate merit that we'll dedicate to them.

Om Mani Pe Me Hum,

Om Mani Pe Me Hum,

Om Mani Pe Me Hum,

Om Mani Pe Me Hum,

Om Mani Pe Me Hum,

Om Mani Pe Me Hum,

Om Mani Pe Me Hum,

Om Mani Pe Me Hum,

Om Mani Pe Me Hum,

Om Mani Pe Me Hum,

So 99 is okay,

Is that where you usually dedicate?

We'll start with page 235,

For general dedication for one or two.

Tibetan or English?

Okay.

Due to the merits of these virtuous actions,

May it quickly attain the state of a Guru Buddha and lead all living beings without exception into that enlightened state.

May the supreme jewel,

Bodhichitta,

That is not arisen,

Arise and grow.

And may that which has not diminished,

But increase more and more.

Just.

.

.

No?

In the land encircled by snow mountains,

You are the source of all happiness and good,

All-powerful Chenrezig Tenzin Gyasu.

Please remain until samsara ends.

You who uphold the subduer's moral way,

Who serve as the bountiful bearer of all,

Sustaining,

Preserving,

And spreading the Manjanas' victorious doctrine,

Who masterly accomplish magnificent prayers honoring the Three Jewels,

Savior of myself and others,

Your disciples,

Please,

Please live long.

May our venerable lama's lives be firm,

Their five divine actions spread in the ten directions,

And the torch of love songs' teachings,

Dispelling the darkness of the three worlds beings,

All who remain.

And all future lives,

May we never be parted from the perfect lama's impure ways to the Dharma,

And we gain every experience of the stages,

Quickly attain Vajradhana Line.

Thank you.

Thanks everyone.

That was fun.