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Does anybody have the copy that doesn’t need it? Thank you. Are we on seventeen or eighteen or nineteen? We are on twenty. Before we go to this I want to take you a little bit back. If you start to look into this Odyssey to Freedom it begins with create environment and all this, and there is a prayer that you said right now. It has invocation, seven limb and all of them and concludes until number thirteen, I think. In number thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen and sixteen is the guru business. It is important business and it is very controversial and important. So we have talked that. Probably conclusions we individually should be drawing, according to the experience of the Buddha is guru necessary? The answer is yes. There is the quality of the spiritual master which is very important. Otherwise everybody, you know every Tom, Dick and Harry, can claim to be a spiritual master today. There is no way to really to check. It is interesting. It is also very easy to exploit.

I was watching a television show about two months ago, a month ago. I think it was PBS or one of those you know like “Sixty Minutes” and it had a big program on a guy who claims to be a Tibetan spiritual master, out on Long Island somebody. Some guy. There were thousands of people, not only a small number, but thousands of people. They are all professional people, very well dressed, and well educated and well placed in social, everything perfect. This guy is teaching them called himself not a lama but Rama, r a m a. They went through Rama training and all this. They all become a lama. He is very well paid. Everybody gives him like ten percent, the lamas gave him ten to twenty percent to twenty-five percent of their income. The organization claims that they have given them a good way of meditating, subtle mind, stable and eight other, so there is more money. The company becomes profitable and everybody wants to become a lama too. Also, do things a big style and claims to be Buddhist and that also from the Tibetan thing and everyone becomes a lama, rather than Rama, r,a,m,a. Interesting. Not so many quit out of that. Very few critics of that. Two of them happened to be on couches, and sent hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. A guy said I have sent him twenty thousand dollars a month in cash from California to New York, but that is rama’s money so we don’t think of it as anything unusual. At the end of that, unfortunately, the guy committed suicide. The color was dark and he jumped in the lake and died there. I mention that and all of those.

When you think about it it is necessary, important and very easy to exploit. That’s why it is very important. When you talk about it, in the sixties a lot of things happened, good things and bad things. Each and every one of them is a problem with the individual who claims to be the spiritual master. It is also a problem with individual, ourselves. Each and every individual ourself if we do not reflect the quality of the master, if we do not investigate the quality of the master and reflect the quality of ourselves and we did not cultivate a pure relationship. We cultivate a different relationship. If you cultivate let’s say a sexual relationship, it is not necessarily a pure relationship. If you cultivate a financial relationship it is not a pure relationship. It is not pure.

So there is a very important point here when we say cultivate pure relationship. Pu r e has to be underlined, underlined and think carefully. That is the point where will make a difference to ourselves, not so much to the person who claims to be the spiritual master. The person who claims to be a spiritual master, he or she can get away with anything, whatever it may be unless they are a really a good one, you know what I mean?

So these are important points. We are all looking for some kind of spiritual path. Just simply we are caught up with the pain and suffering we go through. That’s what it is. Very simple. Nothing more, nothing less, very much. It happens to be one of the open minded people who are willing to explore whatever you can do make a difference, not so much for others lives, but for our own lives. That’s why we are here mostly. Normally I would say we are here for luck. The bottom line really is no matter what we say, for all sentient beings, it is not. We are here for ourselves. We are here for ourselves because we have had enough of suffering. We think enough is enough and we want to do something about it. That makes ourselves vulnerable too. Since we don’t know anything what to do on the spiritual path (10:00), there’s no scientific proof. There is not really a very well established system of meaning. Even you have one it is not fully crafted anyway. So it has become very difficult for the people who want to do something. We charge them to come and it goes in the hands of the people rather than in the hands of the organization or rather than in the hands of the spiritual master, or their public relations persons if they have one. We need one. You want to be that one, Clair? We don’t have one, we are the public relations person. A public relations officer. You mean the propaganda committee? I’m not joking. Think about it. That’s really true.

That’s why it is really necessary to ask ourselves, take the charge of your life and hear how we can invest in the qualities of the spiritual master. You read The Odyssey to Freedom transcript or any Lam Rim, you find out about quality. Not so much in the Odyssey to Freedom? In the Lam Rim you have every quality, quality A to Z. Don’t forget, you are not going to get all those qualities completely. So that’s how you take a charge by yourself in your own hands and make your decision rather than let anybody else tell you I am your spiritual master. Don’t let anybody do that. You judge. If anybody tells you I am your Rama or lama, you run away for a thousand miles without turning back. Just turn and go. That is about between thirteen to sixteen.

Then, seventeen to twenty is it? Seventeen to nineteen is talking about the life that what we have. How important it is. Valuable, life after life, understanding of it. You know one of the biggest problems that we have. Sometimes we treat ourselves so badly. Every problem we come across is my fault. It’s true. We used to blame other people all the time, anybody you can blame, especially your mother-in-law. When you don’t find an answer or you think you are doing something spiritually and it goes wrong, you turn it around and say it’s all my fault. (15:00) And start beating yourself up. It’s not very good at all. It could be your fault, but it could be somebody else’s fault. It really doesn’t matter whose fault it is. Really what matters is we have the faults in common. So really that is reality. Yet somehow our mind thinks it is all my fault and we beat ourselves, saying it’s all my fault. I did this. I did that. Sometimes it’s interesting.

A person whom some of you know named Toby Semma. It’s a funny thing. Toby does a lot of benefits for Jewel Heart. She sort of almost goes out of her way to put on this benefit for Jewel Heart. She was really good. In Cleveland Jewel Heart she started crying. It’s time for you to call me. Why didn’t you call, that sort of thing. We did something good for her because her husband died, (she was) completely sitting in a cocoon even before he died. He died. It was a really bad situation, and she had a couple of friends who tried to do this and that. Then when he died she was in a big cocoon. What we did was get her out of her cocoon. Alan Ginsberg came here and got her out of her cocoon and he did the first Jewel Heart benefit in Ann Arbor.

The funny thing is she was interested in the country of Tibet. She was a student in nineteen fifty-nine when Tibet was a country. She wanted to do her work in nineteen fifty-nine. She really picked the wrong time. She said I prayed and prayed that I would have a lot of material to write on Tibet. That happened to be the year the Dalai Lama came out of Tibet when the trouble in Tibet started, that was the year he came out of Tibet. So she came to India and started praying for material on Tibet. Certain people do that. She just said no Jewel Heart and actually hiding in cocoon. Very difficult to get her out. (20:00) Finally she came out and Alan kept on going with her and saying things and reading things about bodhisattvas and all this and so on. Since then she does very very well. He helped her to get out of the cocoon. This is an example of how people can take things up for no reason. Just happened to be the wrong time. That sort of thing. Then look at ourselves, how much we do this for our own problems or sometimes other people’s problems. Don’t do that. It’s not your fault. You must remember that, it’s not your fault. It also doesn’t matter whose fault it really is. If there is a problem it is better to solve the problem rather than trying to find out whose fault it is. Honestly. It is uncalled for as far as I am concerned. Really true.

It’s a moral issue. I don’t think the moral issue should be trying to blame someone. Definitely not. It is a matter of individual freedom, the right of the individual, the individual freedom. This is really important. I think really the morality depends on the person to person. My morality is totally different from yours. I’m quite sure. There is no question. I have my own vows, I have my own commitments. So do you. You have your own vows and you have your own commitments. Your morality is different from mine and mine is different from yours. It is very much individualized matter. Of course, if I go and kill a human being or something, that sort of thing is in common there. But beyond that is more an individual issue, rather than it is black and white, the rules laid out. But we are used to them in the sixties. I don’t want to undo what has been done the sixties. Though you look back on the sixty’s and there were some bad things, sure, definitely. What was created was a lot of junkies out of it, that’s the bad part of it.

At the same time there were a lot of good things that happened in the sixty’s as well. The individuals opened their mind and expression of freedom. Freedom is so important in this country. Freedom is more important, freedom in the most important. I think in a free country like America we chose freedom as more important than that of our country or our survival. Maybe if we were back in China or something then of course the government is more important than freedom. But we are not. We live in a free society. Freedom is much more important than that of anything else. That’s my personal view.

I say this because I saw Ram Das last Saturday. He’s not better yet. He sounded tired, very limited. I keep on telling him even if you are limited you speak better English than I do. He was laughing. But the point he was expressing is really concern what’s happening in the country today, more an attack on freedom and freedom of expression rather than the Clinton business what he’s saying. (25:00) What the attack, what’s really happening rather than the Clinton business. It is symbolic of that. A number of people who led the freedom are gone. He was saying I would be happy to go out and speak. If I were in better condition I would be going out and giving lectures. He is saying a number of people are gone. Timothy Leary is gone, Alan Ginsberg is gone. On the freedom, he said people were happy to go out and speak. Now a number people are gone. He was saying a number of people who work in that area is gone. Timothy Leary and Alan Ginsberg is gone. They are all gone and there is no younger generation of people are coming up to be freedom of expression. There is nothing happening. He went on and on. He said we should speak to the people or even go to Washington. He wanted to do something in Jewel Heart. He is frustrated, sad and really concerned about freedom and the country. Even he himself has a personal issue. He thinks a joint will help him. I said I’m against that. He said I’m a little better than his own doctor. He is now concerned about the moral issue of the country. I talked about Lloyd Bennett’s morality, moral issue. This is really the point. I think it is really the issue of freedom, the right and wrong. It takes judgement. It is very difficult. To some people the same thing that is right is wrong for others. That’s definitely true. We cannot deny that. Whatever it may be, medicine, treatment, even marijuana. Everything. Right and wrong is definitely not black and white. There are certain points. Stealing or sexual misbehavior and all that are totally wrong. Who judges, you, yourself unless you hurt someone else. Of course, then the judgement comes down. Ken Starr will come and get you. Basically it is your own thing. Personally, I do not believe in punishment. (30:00) I do believe in correction. I do believe prison should not be for punishment. Prison is there to serve God, the society. Some guy, some crazy puts a lot of people in danger. That’s why we put them in prison. It should be an opportunity to correct. We don’t do that as a respectable human being. That’s what it should be, not punishment. It should be an opportunity for that person to correct. God will punish. We don’t have to act on behalf of God. That is your claim and your own appointment. God did not appoint you to be a prosecutor. It’s your own thing you do.

Anyway, the moral issue is a very important point to remember when we embrace human life, when we embrace human quality, when we embrace the freedom, the freedom of expression. Freedom, not the limited freedom what the communist countries give to their members, to their subjects. That’s different because they are communists. We are not. We are a free society. A free society must embrace the freedom. The freedom is an individual freedom. That is more important than anything else. So when we embrace human life we must embrace the freedom as well.

This is a free country, right? We do have a lot of freedom. We can chose to do all sorts of things. We cannot really lose our freedom. The way and how we protect our freedom is to vote in November. Go and vote. I’m not saying vote for what, but go and vote. Vote for freedom. Vote for your own freedom. Each and every individual all of our actions makes totally difference, much more than before today. Today the world has become so small. Remember the scientists are now telling us the movement of the butterfly in China makes a difference in the United States? Each and every move we take makes a difference. Actually peace and freedom, all of those begin with ourselves. We love to talk about world peace and this and that. It is a very nice way. They do all kinds of things for world peace, world peace. The problem is peace is really going to begin with ourselves. You are not going to provide peace in the world for sure. Peace is not going to come out of New York. (35:00) Peace is going to come out of each and every individual. That’s our freedom. We have to maintain that. That is the human quality which we enjoy. Human quality without freedom, lack of freedom, is not really a true qualified human being.

We are looking at almost half the world. I think you can look at China, Cuba and North Korea today and call them communist. But on the other hand if you look in detail, if you look deep down at society in some western countries, Syria and maybe Japan you are looking at some other type of thing. Even if you look in Iran compared with communist China is supposed to be a free country. But can you imagine? You look at any television, you can’t talk about some things. We can’t talk about a girl friend, certainly not. Without television where are you going to learn it? Same in Malaysia. If he does they put him in jail and beat him up. So really the freedom, when you really look at the world. You don’t have the freedom you have in the United States, the Western European countries and Canada, maybe Australia, maybe Japan I don’t know. That’s it. Even in those Latin American countries, the dictators, remember? Look at those Eastern European countries what’s happening, all of them. It is so important that we must appreciate our freedom. I’m not talking about freedom from neuroses, but I’m talking about even the social freedom, that we take for granted now. It is also important to remember and appreciate too. As an American citizen we can go anywhere we want to. We can go to any country and leave at any moment when we want to leave. Look at other countries they can’t. They can’t go. There are a lot of restrictions, limitations. So the freedom is very important. We all know that. Individual freedom is part of the human quality.

We are talking here about freedom from neuroses as well, right? When you don’t have the normal freedom you don’t have the freedom to deal with your neuroses. It’s very difficult to deal with that. Look at the suffering. We have the time and opportunity to deal with our emotional problems. Look in India there are those Indian coolies. You go on the train station they are here and there working twenty four hours a day. They totally have to work. They don’t have the time to entertain emotional problems at all because the actual physical suffering is too strong. They don’t have the opportunity to entertain emotions. We do. Because we have freedom. We can handle our neuroses because we have freedom. We have the time and opportunity. We have the freedom to deal with our anger. We have the freedom to deal(40:00) with our attachment. We have the freedom to deal with our jealousy. Whether you increase or decrease, whatever you do can change it, right? So someone’s quality, that human quality is there, important to remember.

That’s talking about seventeen and eighteen and nineteen, appreciate the rarity. Appreciate American life. Compare with the life they have in China today. Compare with the life they have in India today. Life we have, how rare it is, really. Even our sort of normal concept, normal social life. Go to Mexico and compare the life you have here with life in Mexico. Don’t compare with rich Mexicans. Then we get into trouble, huge mansions. Some Mexicans are very wealthy, but the majority of Mexicans, how poor. Compare with our life, this is no doubt about it. The majority of the world. I’m not talking just about spiritual point of rarity, but I’m talking about America life quality.. Tremendous. Compared with any. I’ve grown up and I used to go to Malaysia and compared with India, it was heaven. Now I go to Malaysia and it does not compare with the quality of life here. That is how good the life here. Very few people compared with the total citizens of the world, very few people have that opportunity. Really true. If you think about what we have here, you are not going to get it easily at all. You are not going to get it.

Anyway. So spiritual value also we have tremendous. Most important value that we have. We can think freely, we can communicate freely. Really. We can think and can communicate. Others cannot think freely. They cannot think as much as we can and and they cannot communicate as much as we do. You can achieve whatever you want to achieve. In the material life, people have achieved a tremendous amount of comfort. A tremendous amount of what you all it, scientific development. From the comfort point of view, from the medicine point of view, from any angle, communication point of view, we have tremendous achievements. It is by using free thinking, free expression, free communication, we did that.

We can also do the same thing in our spiritual path.(45:00). The Buddha does not have restrictions on what we can think. We can think freely. We can express freely without fear of anything. All these great spiritual masters spoke freely, expressed freely. Jesus spoke free all the time. Right? What little I know. They tried to restrict him, but they could not. He sacrificed his life for freedom, free expression. That’s what it is. I got that from a movie, my knowledge is limited to that. But still that’s what it is. With freedom of expression we can achieve all the spiritual path, as much of the spiritual path as we want. We can make that difference until we die.

Don’t think the moment I say death as though there it looks like some kind of big sword hanging over your head. Don’t think that way. It’s not. We go through that. Everybody, no matter how powerful you may be. You may be a great military power, but you cannot avoid, a great military power like Napoleon. Even the Caesars and all this type of thing could not. That power cannot protect from death. If that’s so, they should be living today. They should be here today, but none of them are here. Clearly no military power can protect from death. Now the question comes, what about spiritual power? Hey, Buddha’s gone, gone two thousand five hundred years ago. Jesus is gone, what year is it, nineteen hundred and ninety nine? Everybody. Those great masters, we talk about them as if they are living here today. We talk about the Buddhas and Tsong Khapa if they are in the bathroom and they are taking a shower and are going to come out, in that manner. No, if you think anything about it it’s gone two thousand five hundred years ago. All the great spiritual people, they are gone. Even the great protectors of freedom are gone. Think about it (50:00). Lincoln and Martin Luther King are gone. I have a friend living in India. They were telling me that in India and China younger people were looking at President Clinton as a role model. Not because what he did, we go outside and looking at Clinton as a role model and not a morale role model. It was interesting for me to know. I never knew that. I was told almost all the younger generation are looking for him as sort of a role model, both in China, both in India.

So nothing can protect, military, medicine. That’s another point. Medicine can’t protect forever. It helps tremendously. Without it I would be gone long ago, but I’m still here. That helps tremendously. Can it protect forever? No. They say you can freeze the body, and what do they do, then you treat it again. Who knows who is going to wake up at that time, right? Two hundred years later someone wakes up. Can you imagine? Not possible. Even if it works, how do you know it is the same thing? That is going to create more class. It’s not possible that the same person is going to wake up. No it’s different. Somebody may wake up, no doubt. Its not going to be the same person. It’s going to be another spirit in there. Anyway, it is out of the question for us. No matter who you may be, we can not avoid.

No matter whoever you may meet, but basically everyone is spending their life with suffering. The ultimate suffering will be the death. It is separation, which is disconnecting. Unplugging. Great teacher in seventeenth century said that. (55:00) The moment you are born you don’t have a minute to rest. Running like a galloping horse toward death. That’s what it is. The clock ticks. That’s what’s going on isn’t it? Believe it or not it’s October. We were together just a few days ago and now it’s October. Where is ninety eight and ninety nine? We are busy and then it’s the end, just like that. So the life you live is, really look at your own life. Look at today. That is how the clock ticks. We know but we don’t want to think about it. We’d rather think about living. We don’t want to think about dying. But living and dying goes together. It is part and parcel.You live, you die. So why I’m talking to you this.

Meditate on what you want to achieve. Cut down on our laziness. Laziness is our biggest problem for anything. For me laziness is a big problem. I should walk a mile or two miles a day. I know I should do. Not in terms of doing nothing. American lazy is busy lazy, really. Traditional Asian lazy is be a couch potato. But that’s not your style. Your style is busy lazy. Two years ago she had dropped everything, so I said come out to Cleveland. I watched her. What did she do. She kept herself absolutely busy. She volunteered for volunteer opportunities available in town. We do that just to avoid doing what we are supposed to do. That’s what I call laziness, laziness to avoid what we are supposed todo, just to avoid doing what we are supposed to do. Do I do what has to be done? Sure. We do (100:00)that to avoid what you are supposed to do, right? That is the busy-lazy. If you think about life and how easily it can be lost. Then whatever you’ve done, you realize how important it is for you to do something that makes a difference to you. That’s why we talk about death, the inevitability. If you keep on thinking the value of life, then you realize how important it is to do something that makes a difference to you. That’s what we do. We try to make ourselves do something different in our life. Cut down laziness.

Sooner or later we are all going to go. What happens at death? That’s the biggest question. It’s a mystery. It’s the biggest question. A lot of people are afraid of dying. For example, Alan Ginsberg, when he first came to see me he was afraid of dying. The moment he opened his mouth he talked about death and nothing else. He said that’s not enough. How it’s going to, what it is? Three years before he died, he came down and cried. This year at our summer retreat, Thurman, Robert Thurman said we are all going to die and cried through the night. A little difficulty and he called Thurman, Alan allied Thurman and told him he was terrified. He told Thurman this practice works and I am no longer afraid to go. That’s what he told him at summer retreat. I was a little surprised.

I don’t really think people are afraid of dying. People are afraid of not knowing what will be happening. Not knowing what happens, because nobody has come back from death and said this is what happens, that is what happens. Everybody doesn’t care or they rely on some kind of spiritual information. There is no confirmation. (105:00) It is unknown. The one disappointment I had when Alan died. We talk about the eight steps, and I was really hoping Alan could communicate what he went through, the eight different steps, confirming what happens and all this. It’s a big difference of Alan Ginsburg confirming what happens to a lot of people, than that of anybody else. Unfortunately, he had a stroke and that stroke made him unconscious. So there was no confirmation. That was my difficulty. I was visiting friends in America this year and a woman said to me her mother died in the summer. She saw all the stages, the mirage type of thing, the water, the fire and all. Not only that, she had them for days. She kept on saying where is all this water coming from. Put that fire out! We are going to catch fire. She kept saying that. So maybe there is this process the Buddha talked about. Alan didn’t confirm, but it was confirmed by this lady I didn’t even know, her daughter told me.

We die. What happens? What can you do at that time? And all of those. I don’t think I will be able to cover today at all. So I just mentioned that. The most important thing here is when people die, whether it is yourself or someone else, the most important thing is try not to disturb them. Don’t show any negative emotions. Do not try to scream and cry and bang your head. Don’t do that. A lot of people do it. You have a right to do it, but still don’t do it for the sake of the other person. Don’t disturb the other person. They will find it difficult to let it go, and that’s going to harm that person. So don’t do that. Try to avoid.

I get questions from people, saying so and so is dying so what can I do? One thing important, make sure that person dies in peace. And let her die in love and care and kindness. And be there, (1:10:00)but don’t cry and don’t scream, things like that. Because the other person is afraid of dying he could do that, she could do that. Help them be free of negative emotions, free of anger, free of attachment, free of jealousy, free of worry. They may worry what will happen to my children. Assure them they will be cared for, don’t think about it don’t worry about it. Let the person go peacefully. That’s what you can do, do it with kindness, compassion. Don’t generate attachment, generate love. Generate compassion, don’t generate hatred. Generate compassion. The dying person is dying only. The dying person is not dying on you. They can’t help it. Nobody wants to die. A lot of people get upset and generate anger. He died on me or she died on me. The person didn’t die on you. The person can’t help it. You must understand that. Show compassion the dying person is dying only. Compassion and love can help the living and can help the dying both.

I think some people turn that into some kind of party. Some people turn it into celebration. Its not time to party. I don’t think it is a time for celebration either. It is a time to sit down and think and pull your thoughts together, say prayers and meditate, generate compassion rather than celebrating and partying. Some people do. That’s people’s right. I don’t personally like it, but I don’t know about that from a Buddhist perspective, but personally, I don’t like it.

The a lot of people say what do I do? Say mantras. If that person is Buddhist, sure why not? If the person doesn’t know anything about the Buddha, don’t try to impose your Buddhism on a dying person. That is a disservice because the person may get. (1:15:00)Timothy Leary was dying and Alan Ginsberg called me from Carolina or somewhere. He said “Timothy Leary is dying, please speak to him.” That women called me two times. She said, “Now I’m going to put the telephone in his ear and you talk with him.” I started saying mantras. I said muni, muni maha soha. I said a couple of them. And he said, “Why?” And I thought to myself maybe he doesn’t appreciate Buddha, maybe he doesn’t know mantras. I said you are going to a very nice wonderful space, like an open beautiful place. A few days ago I saw a commercial for a motor company on television and it showed this beautiful open space and driving. He said do you think that? I said any American citizen goes to a beautiful place. Later Alan told me he said,”Why and why not.” Maybe It helped him and maybe not. I have no idea. But it is always to think something positive at that moment.

If the person is a believer in the Judeo Christian tradition, try to remind Jesus, whatever, mother Mary or whatever, saint this or saint that, and all this. If the person is atheist, try create something beautifulness. Whatever they like to be. Always create a wonderful picture. Do not create a miserable picture. That’s not good. Incidentally, I saw the movie called “What Dreams May Come.” I saw that movie. It is very interesting. It is really true. According to Buddha you go to a pure land that is created by you. It is also very much a mental creation. Every existence is a mental creation. That is actually interpreted in that movie, they dreamed of it together. He went to a painting his wife had done. He thought about it. Then she died and there appeared a beautiful new tree there. Suddenly it appeared in that pure land where he was living and that was in the the movie. There’s a huge storm which knocked the tree down in that mental land where she was living, and then going through the hell realm and finding her in the hell realm and bringing her up to the level where they were and taking rebirth in New Jersey. And I thought why would I not find myself in New Jersey? And I find it was very interesting movie. (120:00) Did you see it? The idea of the mental creation and the idea of what we perceive here and it makes a difference over there. These are very important points, and it gives you some idea. It makes you think from what we know. You look at the dharmic, it’s very dharmic, and if you look at it from a material window, it’s very materialistic. That’s that. I will come back and next time I will be here which will be in November or maybe not, maybe someone else will come. I’m sorry I did not give you time for questions, which I should have. So we’ll call it a day.