Archive Result

20090324GRAANL

Do kindly generate the pure motivation of bodhimind, as normally described in the tradition in general and particularly in the lam rim tradition. One would like to obtain the stage of a buddha to benefit all beings. In other words, one would like to become a buddha for the benefit of all beings. So self and others, everybody. So for the good of everybody one would like to become a buddha. Therefore one would like to listen to this teaching, study and practice and meditate and actualize your wish and hope. With this mind do kindly listen to this teaching.

The teaching you are going to listen to is the lam rim and particularly the nyur lam, the 'Swift Path'. We call it "Road Map to Buddhahood." There is first the traditional explanation of the lineage and confirming the stages. After that, the actual development.

The actual development has two:

1. The root of all development, guru devotional practice.

2. What to do thereafter

We are on the second one: and that has two:

1. Encouraging us to make best use and take advantage of the precious wonderful life with 18 qualities

2. How to actually make use of it.

We are on the first: encouraging us to take advantage of this precious life.

That, according to the Swift Path, has two outlines:

1. Importance

2. Difficult to Find

1. Importance

That includes both, recognition and importance of the life. For example the Jampel Zhal Lung's outline you have

del jong ngön sung

dön che wa sam pa

nyi par ga wa sam pa

So there are three. I think the zhal lung lu gyu inludes also zhig pa lha wa within that. I am not sure I haven't read it for a while.

But Pabongka's Liberation in the Pam of your Hands has 3:

Recognizing [qualities of this precious human life[

Importance

Difficulty to Find

In this case in nyur lam, recognizing and importance goes together. So that means recognizing each of those 18 qualities, the 8 leisures and the 10 endowments. The 8 leisures are divided into the 4 with human beings and 4 without human beings. We went through all of these and I don't need to repeat.

The endowments are divided into 5 that relate to our capability of this life that we have now. Then there are the 5 in accordance to the times, relating to when we are born.

So altogether these are the 18 qualities. Each one of them has briefly been summarized in the quote from Letter to a Friend by Nagarjuna. It is mentioned in the nyur lam itself and has also been translated from Pabongka's Liberation in the Pam of your Hands. Each one of them has to be dealt with in two ways:

1. In session

2. In between sessions

Every time, whenever you meditate on the lam rim, at any subject anywhere in the "Road Map to Buddhahood" you have to keep that in mind; whether it is the guru devotional practice or the ultimate level. This is important to remember.

In session refers to what to do when you sit down to meditate.

In between sessions refers to the time when you are not meditating. That is the time in between when you stopped meditating till the time when you start again. This includes anything you are doing: daily chores, working, seeing a movie, performing or attending concerts. That is all part of the in between session period.

In session has 3 parts:

Beginning

Actual

Conclusion

The beginning of the session consists of the 6 prerequisites, which I don't want to repeat here. We have repeated it so many times. By now it should be settled in your head. These include generating the field of merit, offering the 7 limbs, offering the lineage prayer, mandala offering, making the 3 pointed important request and finally dissolving the field of merit. 0:10:30

There are 4 groups: the compassion lineage, wisdom lineage (also called profound group), the practice blessing lineage and the root guru with the direct masters. All four groups dissolve to the most important persons in those groups: Manjushri, Maitreya, Thubwang Dorje Chang and the root master. These all dissolve to Buddha and finally Thubwang Dorje Chang also dissolves to Buddha and thus becomes Buddha Buddha Vajradhara. Again we make the 7 limbed offerings, make strong requests and then Buddha Vajradhara dissolves and becomes Lama Lhak pai Lha on our crown.

We make the single pointed request:

Kyab ne kundu la ma lhak pai lha

thub wang dor je chang la sol wa deb

The ultimate collection of all refuge, Buddha Buddha Vajradhara,

to you I make strong supplications.

We make prostrations, offerings, purify all our negativities and wrong doings, rejoice in our own good things we did as well in others' virtues. We make requests for them to remain forever, make requests for their teachings and then do the dedication.

These are the 7 limbs, and then we make a mandala offering and then we move to the actual sitting meditation.

The point where we stopped last time and where we are joining up to today is this:

I and all mother sentient beings have had so many sufferings, life after life, continuously, even today we cannot end the suffering. Now we want to know why. I and all mother sentient beings have had the opportunity a number of times perhaps. But we can't be very sure whether we ever had such a good opportunity as this one before.

If you look at the qualities of the human life: 5 according to the time and 5 according to what kind of life we have and the 8 leisures, it is not likely. We might have had so many lives, so many human lives, but we might not have had such a time like this. Honestly. A time like this is very precious and extremely rare. Extremely rare.

Look back in history. Look at our great forefathers' period. Here we have a history of 200 odd years of United States history. Look back, where and when there was such an opportunity. There was none, for whatsoever. You may think that is because we are a young country. In countries like China and India there were these opportunities. But look back into India's history of over 3000 years. If you compare it with the 200 years of this country's history it is indeed huge. However, they also had all these war periods between Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists, there were all these years of the great Mogul period. They were all Muslim dominated. Buddha did appear 2600 years ago, but he lived only for 81 years. Thereafter, Buddhism continued for a while, however, it was completed overrun by the Persians, the Moguls and all of them.

Then look in China. They have thousands of years of history and had all these dynasties one after another and Buddhism came only very late in the later parts of the Ching and Ming dynasties. Not very much - although Buddhism did develop so much. So did Buddhism in Japan. But at the same time the Japanese kings were so powerful. They changed all the Buddhist rules and all the monks are supposed to get married and so on. Then you have Buddhism in Thailand and Sri Lanka, which was traditionally called Singhali. Later it became Sri Lanka. Just like in India Bombay was changed into Mumbai. I don't know, for some reason they do all these. But all these countries only have the southern Buddhist teachings, not the northern Buddhist teachings from Northern India.

Look into Cambodia, Laos and Burma. They are great Buddhist countries, but again, only the southern teachings are available and on top of that, they are all controlled by brutal dictators as well as by the Communists. There have been all these political changes. If you look it is very very rare [to have pure complete Buddhism[.

In Tibet our forefathers have completely sacrificed modern development in order to keep the Buddha dharma pure. They were thinking that no one could come in and no one would go out. We were protected by snow mountains. We even say in teh long life prayer for HH the Dalai Lama

kang ri ra wai kor wei zhing kam der

the pure land surrounded by snow mountains

Our forefathers looked at it like that. They were not stupid. They knew about the developments taking place. But they didn't want them, because they were afraid that the purify of Buddhism would be disrupted.

Tibetans had nothing else to protect except being the keepers of the pure Buddhist teaching. They maintained that and that was the main goal. The government may have looked like a silly feudal, dictatorial government. Certainly it was not democracy. It may have been the feudal system and we claim that Avalokitesvara was the king and bla bla bla. It may look silly today and self centered and nothing but people looking for the advantage of total power, but whatever we may see, they have protected Buddhism. 0:22:05

They did so up to 1959 and kept it pure, absolutely pure. Even in the United States, Buddhism might have been opened up by the mid 1940s. But it never came up nicely till the 60s. The 60s revolution was such a great thing and it has contributed tremendously. We really have to pay tribute to the artists who brought it to light during the 60s. Even the scientists from the great institutions who were experimenting, and the drug experiments, then the Beatnik poets were there.

By the way, I hope you enjoyed Anne Waldman last Saturday. I am sorry I was not here. She does some kind of continuation of Allen Ginsberg's poetry style, although Allen's way of reading and Anne's way of reading are slightly different. Allen's way of reading is sometimes continued by Patti Smith. I hope you all enjoyed it and also the quiches that people brought.

That provided us the opportunity here [to get in touch with the buddha dharma[. Also the Chinese provided us the opportunity. They kicked His Holiness and all of us out. Otherwise we would still be there, protecting it within the snow mountains. Maybe one or two people might have come out and it may not look any more like 18th or 19th century, but still, it would be like that.

So the Communist Chinese scattered this whole thing, so everybody ran all over the place. We went south of the Himalayas to India and thereby to the United States. The opportunity thus came to the United States. And most likely it won't last very long. It is such a thing, it really doesn't last very long. A few generations at the most. Then it will get mixed up by what we call "modernization" or "simplification", or "making it easy for people to understand. Communicating it becomes important than the tradition. So they going to try to simplify it. Trying to simplify is fine, but it will go down, be watered down and then will become all kinds of funny things. Everything is going to get mixed up. Healing and all kinds of spiritual things are going to get mixed up more and more, more and more. At the end, as a result, the purity will disappear. Hopefully it doesn't become another new age thing. It may try to be a little deeper than the already existing new age and then lose it's authenticity and it's real value that can affect the individuals, their lives and their understanding. It will happen over a few generations and go away.

Looking at it that way then, this period that we are in is a very important period. This time, when there is all this economic turmoil, that really shows us how our life has totally been artificial. I can't say artificial, but it is totally based on false perceptions. I have told you this many times over the last years. I said all the time, "It is all man-made." Now we are afraid that the man made economic system will collapse. We are putting so much money in it, borrowing from whoever we can. The worst is borrowing from the future generations. Borrowing from the Chinese is fine. Keep on borrowing more. But we may have no choice if you want to keep the existing system working. And if it doesn't work it has to be totally revolutionized. But everybody is so afraid of that. On the other hand, mankind's karma as well as their power and understanding is such 0:31:33 that we could have managed to come out even better than before. However, I don't think we are going to do it. We are going to repair this for another five, six or ten years at the most and then face another challenge. It is man-made, impermanent in nature and has to change. It would have been easier, simpler and less painful to change earlier. But if we are going to go for another 15 years or 20 years, or 3 decades at the most then that's fine. Then we will face another one. It is limited and impermanent in nature, so it needs to change tremendously. Without change it won't work. Temporarily you can patch it up. That's like putting band aids on here and there. That prolongs it - that's fine. But this moment we are beginning to see it -honestly - how impermanent it is. Look at your 401 K - it has gone way down. It may come up again, but it may not. Even if it comes up again it will take 5 or 10 years to come to the level you had a few months ago - before September 15, 2008.

It shows us the [limited value of [the things we treasure, protect and promote so much and make sacrifices for and call them the 'goal of our life'. This is a very gentle way. We Tibetans did go through that between 1949 and 1959, but in a very harsh way - extremely harsh. The whole idea - right or wrong, propaganda or whatever - was to equalize everybody. The Chinese communists came in to make everybody equal - those who had and those who didn't have. People's idea was that those who didn't have would become equal to those who had. But it never went that way.

I told you earlier about this businessman, Minyang Tsombön, who meditated the lam rim with me and Geshe Rigzin Tenpa. This business man saw me later when I went to this retreat place to memorize books and so on. I had a little cave up in the mountain. In the afternoon, when the business man had done his prayers and meditations, he would walk slowly with his cane and bring me a little pot of yogurt. He would sit there between 2.30 and dinner, then have dinner and then he would go back.

He told me, "Kushok, they are not making those who don't have equal to those who have. They are going to make those those who have equal to those who don't have. You understand?" I didn't really pay much attention at the time. I liked the guy, he was a very nice person. But I didn't pay much attention. He was saying that you can't make those who don't have equal to those who have, but that it is easy to make those who have equal to those who don't have. So he told me that this Chinese government would do that. He said, "You are young, a little excited about change and the Chinese and modernization."

What he said was true. Later, throughout China, Tibet, Mongolia, Xingjang, Turkmenistan and so on, that's what the Chinese did. Everybody would get dressed up, beat the drums and musical instruments like in the Chinese dragon shows. Then they would come to a business establishment or store or whatever and if they agreed to give everything to the public and agree that it was no longer theirs individually, they would give them a little flower and drag the person along with them and if they didn't agree, they would write all their faults on a mile-long paper hat and tie their hands behind the back and beat the drum and the person together and keep going.

That's how we learnt the very harsh way how these man-made things are not real, not reality, not permanent. We now, in America, had a very gentle reminder. It was just a very light touch on the shoulder - that gentle. We need to learn that all these things are false. 0:40:26

They are not reality. That has given us an additional opportunity to see how these things are. We consider them to be solid, but they are not necessarily solid. How many people have considered Bernhard Madoff solid? It was a false impression. Now we know, but at that time nobody knew or thought that it was false. Everybody tried to get in his jacket and were even paying commission and doing necessary things to get in.

I learnt that in Florida last weekend. There is a Jewish club that is now facing difficulties. I met Professor Nathan Katz there, a Judaism-Buddhism professor. He was telling me that his wife works for that club and he said the difficulty is that the club did know that Bernie Madoff was not really solid, so two years ago they withdrew all the club's money. However, all the donors of the club were also involved and they couldn't tell the donors and the donors didn't know. Now that the donors are facing difficulties the donations have gone down tremendously. They almost went to zero level, just when they needed the donations to come up by 100%. The thing is that it was a club privilege, if you were a member that Bernard Madoff would take you as a client. People would pay $200,000 to become a club member and another $200,000 donation to a favorable charity through the club. After that they could become Bernard Madoff's client. They said, "Now he will have to take you." However, many times he still didn't.

So it was a very false impression that he created. How solid it seemed! You had to spend $400, 000 in order to get close to him. That is a very good example of a false impression. Now we can look back and see what happened in the last 20, 30 years. In another dimension our whole life is like that. Everything is a false structure, our economic system and even our political system. Democracy, communism, dictatorship, everything is similar to that. Even the rulers of the feudal system, all of them are false. All that can collapse one day, just collapse, like a card house. If something shakes a little somewhere, it will go. Even our buildings are like that. They can all collapse, for example in an earth quake. We may say, "It was because the contractors didn't put the right amount of cement in, they were corrupt", and so on. You can say that, doesn't matter. But the reality is that when it collapses it collapses.

So yesterday, in support of Nathan Katz, I said, "If the economic situation had not developed to the point where it was late last year, Bernie Madoff would still be doing the same business and everybody would still try to get to him and pay $400,000 without hesitation in the hope he would take them as a client. He would still be doing the same thing. That is how everything is. If you really look, from the deeper point of view, that's what it is.

Right now there is the opportunity to see that all of that is not real. You can see it now. Believe me, we are going to put trillions of dollars into this and it means that all that new money is going to be printed, for sure. If you take these green dollars and go to Fort Knox and say, "Where is the gold to back this up?", they will probably give you one piece of gold and say, "All of you, share this piece of gold." It won't be there, for sure. Really, the true wealth is our virtuous efforts of generosity and other virtues. Somehow it accompanies you, whatever what your condition may be, you will have your needs met. You will have access to the things you need. That is your true wealth. The false wealth is the certificate that we carry in our wallet. We exchange that and I give 10 to you and you give 9 back to me, so actually I am willing, because I give one and you give 9. But at the same time I am losing. It is such a thing, this winning and losing together. It is functioning and in reality it is all losing.

So right now we have an opportunity to see this - and that is rare.

It happened during Harry Truman's period for a while and then in 1988, in the beginning Reagan's time, when the stock market crashed. Very briefly there was the crisis. Reagan kept coming on the television and kept saying, "Nothing is wrong with the economy right this moment. I don't know what's happening." And truly he didn't know what's happening. (laughs). We all thought he was lying, but truly, he didn't know what was happening. Now we know very clearly, he didn't know. 0:50:02

Then this Iran - Contra affair came. And he said, "I don't recall." The poor guy was suffering from Alzheimers. Now we know. It is very clear now that by that time he had to be told everything and it had to be put in writing and almost had to hold his hand and tell him, "Sign here, sign there." Congress insisted that he testify and he kept on saying, "I don't recall." He was telling the truth and the whole country thought he was lying, that he should go to jail because he was lying under oath. It is proved now that he was not lying.

Anyway, we have this great opportunity right now that our previous generation did not have and our future generation will have difficulty to see and even at this present generation only a handful of people will see it while a lot of people will say, "We are in trouble. We got to fix it. How are we going to fix it?"

We made Obama and Tim Geithner responsible to fix it. They are trying to fix it. We are completely obsessed with fixing it and I think we will fix it - for the time being, put bandages around and we will be walking again, but remember, it is bandaged. That makes it important.

Particularly, at this moment, we don't have such a powerful threat to us to do whatever we want to do. This is the beauty of our freedom. Whatever we want to do, we can do it. You want to become a Buddhist, you are free to do it. If you want to become a very conservative right-wing Christian or whatever, you can. You are free to do it. You want to become a crazy American Muslim and act like this young guy from Seattle, who we call "enemy of the nation", who is a spokes person for Bin Laden, you can do it. You have the freedom. Every American wont' like you, but every bin Laden person will love you. And you have that freedom. You can become a Hare Krishna guy with a yellow dress and these little cymbals, going everywhere chanting "Hare Ram, Hare Krishna" and say, "You like some books, just 5 dollars!" Or you want to sit in the corner of the street and sing, "You got to pray just to make it today". You can do that too. That is the value of freedom.

If you live in Tibet today you don't have that freedom. If you would like to pray to the Dalai Lama you are a reactionary, a follower of terrorist. The Chinese example of a terrorist has become the Dalai Lama, just like we talk about bin Laden. Whoever sympathizes with the Dalai Lama is a follower of terrorism. That includes us, you and me. You people have become "terrorist followers" and I have become terrorist staff or a terrorist commander. I hope I am not Ali Sheik Mohammed! (laughs)

So this freedom is a really important value. And we have that. If you are living under such a system [as the Chinese[ most people are even falsely accused and you can't even do your spiritual practice. You can't do it. When the Communists come they control everything completely. When you move your lips while saying prayers you are a reactionary. So you can't move your lips. If you are in the company of three or four people you have to make sure you don't move your lips. If you do, one of them will accuse you and if the others deny that, they too will become the followers of those accused. So, if anybody accuses someone - right or wrong - everybody around has to agree and say that it's true, because they don't want to become followers. You can't even say OM MANI PADME HUM quietly.

During the Cultural Revolution what seen as brainwashing and now it is probably seen as a terrorist mantra or whatever they call it. That's where we in America today are very lucky to have this freedom.

Additionally, we have all the requirements: information, friends, and everything. We can talk about it, we can read, we can listen, we can ask questions. We do have quite good wisdom of learning and analyzing and thinking, even if you think you are stupid.

One thing also, the American never think, "I am stupid." That is a good thing. In Asia everybody thinks they are stupid and even sign letters with "your most stupid, dumbest, end of the rope student". Maybe that is the culture. They try to be a little modest and sometimes go too far. Americans don't have a problem with that. If you have a problem at all, it is with the other extreme. "I know everything." "Ask me a question and I can tell you." And then you can talk 'about' it. You don't talk on it. People are like that.

The other day we were talking with someone about the word 'merging'. One person was talking about everything, the traffic, the highways, the way people drive fast or slow, but not about merging. They were talking around everything. Americans are good at that. If you ask a question they will talk everything around, except on the point.

1:00:01 And then one important thing: we have not gone under the control of non-virtuous masters or non-virtuous friends. This is important. One has to be really careful with this. They can come from any quarter, from anywhere, from any level. We don't have that, so we are very, very lucky. If you have a crazy spouse, husband or wife, who wants nothing but money, whatever it takes, legal or illegal, right or wrong, just money, money, money, then you do have a non-virtuous friend. Such a non-virtuous friend will influence you.

They will say that whatever you are doing is totally wrong. They will say, "Why are we wasting time? It would be better to pick up pennies on the roadside." Similarly, a non-virtuous friend may say, "I don't believe that. It is a total waste of time. Who really obtained buddhahood? It is just a story and history mixed together. It is not reality. Who really saw it? Where is liberation? Where is suffering? This is not suffering, it is enjoyable." "This is the spice of life, a little chilli in your soup that gives you a good kick, rather than suffering."

This is the non-virtuous friend, no matter from which corner or which ethnicity they come from. They maybe Tibetan, Mongolian, Chinese or Japanese, Korean or whatever, it is non-virtuous. If you are influenced by that, it deprives you of a lot of opportunities, as we can clearly see.

One good thing is that we have met with the teaching and the teacher. We know a little bit about what practice really is. Some people are wonderful, but love and light. We see the wonderful quality of these people but we also see what they are lacking with their practice. It is very obvious to us and luckily we are not in that position.

One more important thing: every authentic teaching becomes practice for us. We can read, understand and every word carries a tremendous amount of messages for me - at any level.

There are zillions of Buddha's teachings and thereafter by his disciples. Each and every one of them tells us something and we can advantage of it at every level we are at. That is very important for us.

Then we also have a reasonable place and reasonable facilities to learn, meditate and practice. We can also form a community of people who have the same thinking. These are people who not only support each other physically, but mentally and emotionally. All these opportunities are there. We have all the qualities we need to make ourselves a perfect buddha at this moment, at this time.

When I first came to Ann Arbor, it was to visit. I remember one day I was going back, it was in1985 or 86. In 1987 I moved to Cleveland and in 1988 I moved permanently to Ann Arbor. So one time in 1986 I was going back to India and Sandy dropped me off at the airport. She was shedding tears, saying, "There are no practitioners a hundred miles east, west, north and south of here." I do remember that clearly. That was in 1986 and now all of you are here. So it gives you better opportunity. This is rare.

Our life is so important. We are narrowing it down very specifically. It has great advantage and power on the basis of zhing, sampa, ngö po, ten, dü.

(talking to audience): what's the matter? If you do skittish things in lam rim teachings, we will scold you. Pari Rimpoche had a long stick and if you were in the front row, you would have that problem.

zhing is like the base on which you work. In that regard, this life has trememdous power.

sampa - our thoughts have tremendous power. That is probably our motivation.

ngö po - the materials we use give us tremendous power.

ten - the conditions in our life have tremendous power.

dü - the time we are in has tremendous power.

These are 5 important points why our life is important. We are now moving on: remember the outline of the importance of this life is mixed together here. So now we are moving to the importance of this life. 1:11:26

Buddha said, "If a bodhisattva could heal every prisoner who had lost their eye sight and take them out of prison and give them a luxurious life - how much virtuous power that would create! It would be immeasurable."

In the traditional Indian culture, as I told you it was the feudal system, they would sometimes punish people by taking their eyeballs out. Even in Tibet they did that. One time I remember it was in the 1935 - 36. There was the head of a very well known noble family, who tried to set up democracy in Tibet. The British-India government advised him what to do, but finally he was caught, put in jail and his two eyeballs taken out. They wanted to kill him, but somehow within the nobility they were able to save his life, but they took out his eye balls. It was very rare that this happened. I was born in 1939 and during my childhood everybody talked about this. It was a traditional, brutal culture that came from India, along with the good things like dharma. That was not part of the dharma, but part of the culture. It is not just that they took out the eyeballs directly, but they got two little four-sided sheep knuckles, put them on the sides of the head, connected by a rope and then they squeezed that rope together more and more, driving the bones into the head from both sides, until the eyeballs would come out. It was not easy, it was terrible.

So if a bodhisattva could take all of these prisoners out of prison and give them new eye sight, give them a respectable, wonderful life - tsang pai de wa - like that of Indra and Brahma, how great the act of this bodhisattva would be!

But today, in our time, if we could look to one bodhisattva, without thinking, "What is wrong with that person?", but with profound respect, if you could do that with just one bodhisattva, you would have much better benefit than if earlier you did all this.

This is Buddha's statement and Buddha doesn't lie. Unbelievable, right? That's why our life is important.

Further, making offering to just one hair pore of the Buddha gives the individual much more powerful benefit than making all the best offerings and give respect to all bodhisattvas everywhere. We know that from the teachings on the guru devotional practice: to give offerings and respect to just one hair pore of the spiritual master has much more benefit than making offerings and paying respect to all the buddhas. And that can be done through this particular life today.

That is the difference of the base. It has a little problem. There is advantage and disadvantage. It is true. At the time of contemplating we try to give everything to our master to accumulate merit. When I first came to the United States in 1977 in Texas, some wealthy Texas guy gave me a four or five big gold coins. When I went back to India first I saw Kyabje Trijang Rimpoche. So I have him all these gold coins. I put them under his cushion, rather than on the table. He didn't say anything, but after a while he went under the cushion and got the coins and put them on the table. Then he said, "All right. So you are giving me these. If I take one and give the rest back to you, you won't like it. So let's divide them equally." And the rest that he gave me back, I gave to Kyabje Ling Rimpoche. So that's what you do. That is the advantage for me and also for those who had given me these things.

The disadvantage is this: this way of doing it has developed so much in the Asian cultures, like India, China and Tibet. In India, the gurus and the temples get so much money. You have no idea how the Indian devotees give. 1:20:57. Any respectable, reasonable guru in India could raise multi-millions of dollars within the matter of hours.

They just call the well-to-do disciples and they will bring cash. People throw bundles of money into the Indian temples, not one rupee notes, either, but 100 and 500 notes. The temple keeper takes it and there is no record, no tax, nothing. The problem is that the poor people in the street and the sick people don't get help.

It is the same thing with the Chinese and the Tibetans. This is what used to happen. Hospitals, child care, battered women care and all of them were completely neglected, because every single penny was given to the gurus or temples. Monasteries would also not get that much. The gurus would get it. Nowadays monasteries are getting more. At least people understand a little better now. Earlier, even the monasteries mostly lived on the "trickle down economy" of the rimpoches and gurus. That is the disadvantage.

Can you imagine some Indian guy wearing a little dhoti and coming in with bundles of money? I knew some very few people in India who addressed me as 'guru-ji'. I went and sat at the Imperial Hotel. That hotel belonged to them, so I got free accommodation there. A couple of them wanted to come and see me there. That's why I sat outside where they had beautiful lawns. They had put a little tent there and I sat there, enjoying the day. By the time, at about 11.30 am, I was sitting there and having breakfast, the first people came and brought some bundles and by the time I left from there at about 5.30 pm, people had brought me way over 150,000 rupees. And I am nothing. I am not an Indian guru. I only know a family and through that family a few people came. That is how they function.

On the other hand there are beggars sitting on the roadside, with twisted arms and no legs. It is said that this may have been done purposely to them. Maybe that's true. I used to always buy a newspaper from a guy who had broken arms and legs, walking on two crutches. I always bought a paper and gave him one rupee extra. One day, in the afternoon, I was driving past that place and saw that he was getting into a taxi and took off. So this was part of an organization that collected money from people.

Unfortunately, what these groups do is steal people's children, twist their arms and legs to make them eligible for begging and they are the beggar masters. That is very unfortunate, because already there is a huge amount of money going to gurus and temples and not getting to the homeless and sick. Every family has a limited income. India has the richest and the poorest people in the world. Even if your income limit is a trillion, if they spend so much money on the gurus, they won't spend it on the poor. They are going to feel the pinch.

This is not part of the lam rim teaching, I am just telling you this. Now I better stop. It is 9.20. So we are in the middle of importance of life. We talked about the base. We have not done the motivation part. Out of 5 points we have done one.

So this is how you are supposed to meditate:

kyab ne kun du lama lhak pai lha

thub wang dor je chang la sol wa deb

The collection of all perfect refuge, Lama Lhak pai Lha

I supplicate you.

I and all mother sentient beings may have the development of embracing human life in general and particularly the understanding of the recognition and the importance of this life together. Light and liquid come together from the body from Lama Lhak pai Lha, purify negativities in general and in particular, obstacles to this. I and all sentient beings become pure and we develop the recognition of human life combined with its importance. We offer the seven limbs, prostration, purification, rejoice, offerings, request to remain, request for teachings and dedication and mandala offering and finally a duplicate Lama Lhak pai Lha dissolves to me. I become a buddha. At my heart level is the muni mantra. Light radiates from the mantra, while I am saying OM MUNI MUNI MAHA MUNIYE SOHA. That light reaches all inhabitants and environments. By the touch of the light all inhabitants become pure and also the environment becomes pure. The light dissolves back to me and we dedicate all our good deeds in general and in particular this teaching session and meditation to obtaining buddhahood and thereby leading all living beings to the stage of the Buddha, without leaving out a single one. 1:30:58

Then we join the in between session period. Do kindly make a short mandala offering: sazhi pökyi.....Thank you

©2009, Ngawang Gelek, All Rights Reserved