Adapting to West

And that and that is something that is really interesting because my teacher was is he’s not white. He’s still here very classically trained and I mean, you came in, you were always very straight on your seat. You didn’t talk unless you’re spoken to. You didn’t drink water. And so what I’ve done a little bit different than my teacher is I’m a little more lax. And and I work a little bit more on your emotional side and really trying to touch on that and getting back in touch with basically the four thoughts, the four thoughts that turn the mind and the form measurables, loving, kindness, compassion, joyousness, equanimity, the precious of the human birth, impermanence of everything, karma and its effects, and the ocean of samsara. Those are the basic things that really, as my students that I try to get them to reconnect with my teacher’s mind is so vast that I can’t compare with him. And that used to be a thing too, is how am I ever going to fill those shoes? And I came to realize that I’m not feeling his shoes any more than he filled his teacher shoes. You have your own set of shoes. One of my greatest models is Martha. Let’s our and Martha was, of course, the teacher to Miller. So Miller, of course, we know, is the great yogi of Tibet. But Martha was sort of a big guy and he had a really bad temper. And but he was also known as the translator. And so you call him marvelous. So. So, I mean, the translator. So using that sort of model, I’ve learned to take maybe some of the Tibetan explanations and Tibetan words and translate them into a little bit more palatable English in using descriptions of, say, the nature of the mind and how to get to that certain spirit state, how to sit in regard to things like that. Whereas a lot of times I think, myself included, we get caught up in the different words and we get so confused all over the different words. MUHAMMAD Rigby On and on and on is like, What in the heck are we talking about? I sort of distilled that down well, at the same time, trying to maintain that integrity, that’s really what I view my job is, is to be this sort of go between between the sort of old school that my teacher was and the new school, which I think sometimes is too lax. And being somewhere in the middle of the two, still maintaining what I believe is important as far as maybe some of the discipline, but not is not as strict as my teacher, but maintaining the flavor of it at least, so that when I teach and when students come here, they get the full flavor of exactly what we’re doing that we know we’re not just playing around. We don’t do this because it’s fun. We do this because we have vowed we would do this and that that’s part of it and we take it seriously. It’s not a game. And I think we mentioned before about discipline and how, you know, we sort of take religion and boxing into these different it’s box, but it’s not it’s it’s sort of given a guideline and maintaining the old sort of ancient theories of ancient texts and ancient procedures, so to speak. But at the same time, sort of widening those corridors a little bit instead of being so very tightly wound. Because really in God, we talked about this again, it’s really about letting go of everything, even, you know, even letting go of that tightness that that being bound to a certain way. You have to let go of that, too. So that’s really the the main differences between what my teaching level and experiences versus my teacher. I, I will always revert back to what he says as far as, you know, any main questions and things like that. My own experiences is what I have to go off of. It’s been interesting to be able to look back on my own experiences during like the Andrew or the past difficulties I had and be able to relate to students that say, Well, I’m going through this. Okay, well, this is what happened to me. This is how I got through it. So it’s very beneficial to have gone through those things. This is why they’re beginning. When I earlier when I said I wouldn’t change a thing because I have that experience to draw from and all those emotions and all the crap I went through, let’s put it that way to say, Yeah, okay, I understand you from ways that maybe someone else who hadn’t gone through that understands. So it and and there are students which I, you know, I don’t connect with. I’m going to teach you as much as I can, but there are some who are really, really, really tightly connected because they’re there’s some connection. I can’t explain how that happens. It’s just you do. And I think that happens with every teacher.

Challenges

So right now I’m 100% just thoroughly blessed. I have all the time I need to practice. I can know I could take time off to talk with you. I can attend all these different classes. I have that luxury when when you talk about the four thoughts that turn the mind. One of them is the precious human birth. Okay, so being having all your faculties about you and then having the leisure to be able to attend these practices and to learn right and right now is very easy for me. I own my own business. I can take the time I need. In the beginning, I still work for someone else, so I had to figure out how to juggle work and getting off work maybe 40 minutes early and convincing my boss was okay to do that. And at the time when I first started, the lady I was dating was not Buddhist. And so she had to get used to, What are you doing for an hour every night? And where are you going for an hour on Mondays and all those things? And you have to sort of explain that that makes it very difficult. One of the last things I would recommend is, is that here’s having a spouse or a significant other who is not Buddhist is very difficult because they don’t understand what you’re doing, especially if there is a jealous type. Yeah, that that’s a huge obstacle. The other obstacle is financial. Believe it or not, it costs money to be Buddhist, has to do anything. But but it’s it’s a financial commitment. You know, it’s we don’t necessarily have tithing, but but you are expected to support your for and, you know, the ability to do that is dependent on what you make, obviously. But you have to sacrifice, you know, maybe the three or four cups of coffee at Starbucks instead, you know, things like that. But that’s not that’s not a terrible obstacle. The other obstacles. Little bit more then you get the obstacle of your own mind. And I think that’s the biggest one is what am I doing? Is it really doing anything? It’s a funny language. All of it. We do all our practices in Tibetan. I don’t speak Tibetan and granted it’s transliterated. So we have the phonetic Tibetan. We use. And being lost. I remember just being thoroughly lost. I’d come to Pujas and be like, Where do I go? It took me like three years to fully understand where we were and what we were doing. And Buddhism is interesting because it’s constantly changing what you get it down to, like it’s a science and you know exactly where you are. And then the teacher go, okay, we’re going to do something different through maybe a different practice or a different mantra. And so you have to learn all these other things. So that was one of the other obstacles is being a different language. And physically for me was sitting cross-legged. Like I said, I hadn’t done that in 20 years when I started. And so that now I do it all the time, you know, hours on end, it’s no big deal. Even some of the Zen guys I know are like, you guys sit that long know. Yeah, you sit away. The whole practice. Yeah. You know, you stretch your legs a little bit and then and then fill them back in and it’s fine. So there’s these mental and physical challenges, of course, and obscuration and hindrances to it. And there was there was like a two month period of time where I couldn’t get to the temple to save my life. You know, my car broke down. I had to figure out a way to get here, all sorts of different things. And now as you go through it, I find it’s really interesting how it works because I found that the further I got into practice that those observations had started to fall away. I still have some. Don’t get me wrong, I wish I was free of obligations. Life would be great, but in general, the more you practice, the more those obligations fall away. And the practices also help with that. They help with those obstructions. In reality, I think a lot of it is up here. I think a lot of it we learn to let go of those things and that helps us to sort of be okay with those things, the way things happen in the way things are. My life’s a lot richer because of it. My wife now is, of course, a practitioner. She’s she’s actually been recognized as Conder. So that’s her next to mine up there. So she she’s she’s the real driving force behind all this. Right. And she a tremendous support. And we still have our moments because I’m technically still her teacher and she’s she’s funny because she knows there’s some things I won’t just talk about. Right. But she also knows if I’m playing Minecraft, which I do for about an hour a week, she knows if I’m playing Minecraft, I’m involved in enough where I’m not thinking and she’ll ask me a question or just blah blah blahs. So, you know, but I’m just like everyone else, right? It’s not like I spend all my time sitting in a room, going home and everything’s good. It’s not like that. Time is, of course, a challenge. You had to sort of use your time wisely. You have to not be so I think we all get myself included. We all get on this rigid time frame. And you have to be able to say, no, I need to be able to change this. It’s like this week, like we were talking earlier, this is like the busiest week my whole life forever. Right. But I’ve learned to just sort of let some things go that I think are important and work on these other things for a while and go back to the things I think are important. Learning how to juggle all of these things and juggle being a llama and juggle being a mechanic and a father and a husband. I’m not going to call those hindrances, but you learn how to juggle them. You learn how to give each one. It’s specified and earned time. You don’t have to spend time with the kids too, so you just learn how to do it. And it’s okay because you have really good examples. You have I mean, look at to and look at my own teacher. They all do the same thing and we learn how to do it. And the ideas what what’s most important in your life? And this this goes back this is a cone from the Zen tradition. What’s important in your life? And everyone will within 5 seconds spout out something, really sit and think about it. What would you be okay with letting go of or having less of what’s really important right now and for the foreseeable future? My what’s important in my life is obviously my family and my business and being a practitioner, being along with being a teacher and all of those meld very well. There’s an ultimate and a relative reality and there’s this sort of razor thin edge that you walk along for both of those. And sometimes you’re in one, sometimes you’re in the other. But but it all sort of equals out. And what’s funny is, like, you walk in my shop, you don’t know my llama. If you’re to walk around, I should have showed you this way. You’re there. There’s a Tonka hanging there and a incense box and a couple other small pictures, but I can see them, but no one else can. And so those are nothing more than reminders of who I am physically and spiritually, who I am and what I’ve become, what I’ve been blessed to be, to be. And so I think that that’s that’s important to know. Both sides. I think you can’t live in one world or the other. You have to sort of live in both. And once you learn how to do that, then it’s much easier to do. Yeah.

Lineage and Teachers

So my own teacher was a student to tackle Urban and is and also a la Madonna. And also kept contact. And those people when they came from Tibet they literally carried the Dharma on their backs. They literally carried the practices on their backs so that we could have them now. A lot of people don’t stop and think about that, that what we practice was the great sacrifice, literally the lives of of some people to bring that into the West. China’s main mistake they made was invading Tibet because Buddhism would have stayed right where it was. It would have never propagated out into the West like it is now. And but it’s only through the sacrifices of many, many Tibetan people that we have those practices today. We’re very close with the Tibetan community here. And when they come to visit, even as a white lama, they still bow and prostrated. And that’s a really weird thing because you’re practicing your religion, that’s theirs. But you’ve sort of adopted it because it’s not a Western religion. And with that comes great responsibility. The lives of those people who sacrificed to bring it to you and those who still look up to you, they literally put you on a pedestal because you are practicing on their behalf. That’s one thing I’ve had to explain to a lot of the new people is, you are practicing on behalf of literally thousands of people in different countries that know you’re here. We have practitioners in Nepal and Bhutan, in China, all these different places that know we’re here and that we’re practicing on their behalf. So they elevate. It’s at this high level. If you’re going to be elevated to that level, you need to earn. It is how I view it. And it’s our responsibility to pass that on in an unbroken line from from teacher to student that contains all the blessings as well as the proper instruction, not just on meditation, but also the ritual arts that go along with that. Like we were talking earlier there, there are a lot of meditation teachers, but it’s a different kind of meditation than Tibetan Buddhism. I guarantee you it’s a meditation that makes you feel good. Okay, that’s fine. Tibetan meditation is not necessarily about feeling good. Yes, there are parts of it to do, but that’s not our ultimate goal, of course. As you developed your relationship with your teacher. The teachings of that lineage become more and more imparted to you in deeper and more. More you have more feeling to the teachings rather than just someone mumbling a bunch of words. You can read the same words, probably in any of the books we talked about earlier, but it won’t have the same meaning, nor the same feeling. And without that relationship, you might as well just go back to reading books because you’re going to get something out of it, but you’re not going to get the full blessing, the full force of it. So as you talk about a lineage and how it needs to be unbroken, you need to be able to follow your lineage back. I can follow my lineage back in two different ways. One, back through the Karmapa, back to God pulpit. I can follow it all the way back that way. That’s a pretty short line. The other line I can follow all the way back to Guru. And then, of course, all the way back to the Buddha himself. So that’s all unbroken in. And once again, it’s not because I’m anything special. It just happens to be my karma that these two lineages combined together in me and knowing that adds to that responsibility, you know, that I’m sort of being entrusted with those teachings. I’m being trusted to try to carry that on. And it’s a huge responsibility to the student that my biggest worry when I first started being a Lama was Am I wasting people’s time? You’re messing with your life now. What are you instructing them to do? Are you actually doing any good? Is this the way that was really taught? And you have to you have to go back in your memory bank. Is this really what is really what I was taught? And most of it I can tell you that that something happens where you start relying less on what you think you’ve been taught and what’s known as knowledge and relying more on what’s known as wisdom. The natural wisdom that arises through the practice it carries on into the teaching. It’s hard to explain the two differences, but there’s a huge, vast difference in those two things. And and that’s, you know, it’s all about responsibility. My teacher describes the word lama as being someone who carries weight. And it is it is a huge weight, but I do it very freely. And it’s not I don’t consider it to be a heavy burden. Maybe it’s the nurturing nature that’s always been part of me. I don’t know. But I do. I feel a responsibility. And, you know, we were talking the other day, some of the song and I and they’re like, what? What’s the worst thing you’ve ever been through? One of the song I remember is called Me Literally at Midnight, telling me as I blew his head off. That’s that’s heavy. That’s a heavy thing to do. And what do you do with that? This was soon after I became a lama. There’s no training for this, right? There’s no training for when someone says that to you. And he has sort of had this have to go with what they need. You know, there’s not as there’s not the same answer for everyone. So the word lama and him, the the the the what would you call it the that the whole aspect of being a lama is one of wait but it’s also done in joyousness. It’s not, it’s not a heavy burden. And I think when you first, when I first became alarm, whoops, let’s not do that. When I first became a member, I thought it had to be really cool, you know, and, and, and there are times I wanted to just not do it anymore because it does you can get overcome sometimes with emotion. And also, you know, you always have that self-doubt and almost like imposter syndrome. It’s like you look at like the Karmapa and you look at and it’s like, I’m part of these guys, but. But look at me, you know, I’m different and it’s but but you have to realize that I have had to come to the conclusion that this is your karma and it is because of your karma that you are connected to it. And this is this is yours to share. This is yours to be a part of. And it’s not you know, like I said, I’m nothing special, but what I teach is so.

Ngondro

Yep. So number of practice was basically assigned to me, basically as soon as I took refuge. We need to start on this and in. In the old days, like in Tibet, Nepal, you didn’t even get taught how to meditate until you done under a basically. Right. So so that’s what was assigned to me and because I go through the I mean, the first thing we all know about is, is this tremendous, you know, the five boom is just like, holy cow, you want me to do 100,000 of each one of these things? It’s going to take, you know, a thousand years, but it doesn’t a 100,000 frustrations. Okay. That sounds real fun. Right. And the frustrations, you know, I think one of the things as Westerners that we’re that we had to try to get beyond is is that ego thing and the frustrations, especially when you start dealing with a group that gets rid of your ego really quick. Right? Because everyone’s watching how you’re doing. You get a tripping fall. How many can you do before you turn red? And I you know, and so as you go through those things, each one of them has their own adventure. I think each part of it does my my own. There’s two things that really resonated with me with with Andrew. One was long rider side for him and the reason why and there’s a book called Vajra Sutra Meditation. I can’t remember who wrote it. Dirty is about the front white book, but it goes into great detail about what’s going on with that practice and as you see, dirty, simple above your head and he’s literally flushing out all of your impurities. Okay. One of the things I stress to all of my students is exactly that, is, is that all those impurities, I don’t need to know what they are. You all know what your impurities are. Let him flush those out. And the other part about Dirty Simple is take some time to figure out who he really is. Dirty Sampa is the is the the combination of of all 100 different degrees, 52 wrathful and 48 peaceful deities exist in dirty sampa. So the energy of all of those that enlightened energy is all of dirty sampa and that energy is literally what is flushing out all those impurities. I have a lot of impurities. I still do. I still do a lot of long letters. But what I tell people that’s really funny is, yeah, you do 110,000 of it, but guess what? You’re still going to do a lot more what you know, as just regular practice, you’re going to do it. And when you start letting go of what your stuff is and it’s sort of a psychological flow, is that that energy coming down, those things being released, and myself and even some of the students now that I talk to that are doing it, you go through these crying fits. You know, you’ll you’ll start to remember things you haven’t thought of in 30 years. Maybe that that hurt really extremely bad. Maybe a some sort of abuse. Maybe it was just, you know, something that you did you weren’t so proud of. And and the object is to let it out and set it aside. It’s not yours anymore. Let someone else have it. That’s. That’s the part about that particular part of the practice. The second part, which is probably the first or decs the longest part to do guru yoga. The Guru Yoga and the recitation of the guru mantra at the end of the mantra that really I think a lot of people try to fly through it. I tried myself to fly through it. And when you know you’re supposed to do 1.2 million of those after about the first 500,000, I realize it’s not about flying through it. It’s about connecting with Guru and the blessings that come from Guru. You’ve, you’ve now purified yourself as a vessel, dirty, simple. You’ve made the model offering and created vast amount of amounts of merit. You transformed yourself into another deity. All these different things have happened through this, and now you’re connecting with what’s known as the second Buddha of our time of Guru, who is, you know, all these miraculous things are attributed to him, but also who is he and where is he? You know, do some research on each one of these things that you’re dealing with. Do some research. I’m going to say do some research on dirty sample depending on which and under you’re doing do some research on Vajra beginning find out who they really are and what its meaning and what aspect you’re taking on as you’re doing these practice. And you’ll see that there’s this progression that you start with frustrations and then you start, then you start taking refuge and then you start taking sort of the body sort of and see you see how all that builds until at the very end, it’s this really deep connection with Guru or empathy. And I think if you let yourself do that and be be calm, there’s another word, not calm. Just be very open and very light with the practice. Don’t worry about the number so much. Make the connection. It goes much easier. I finished my second under, so that’s why it was really cool and that’s why we Bonnar And that was really cool because we did, we did a full mondo offering, but nothing that was it was it was the coolest thing I’ve ever done. Thank everyone. So what did you do? It was really cool. I finished not a Buddha, you know, and sitting up on Buddha and making that offering. And you feel like you’ve done that a thousand times before. And and that’s something I will always remember. My wife and I finished another at the same time, but I sort of held off and she hurried up so. So we could. And so that was that was a really cool thing to just feel that. And there’s, there’s a definite spiritual energy from that that you really gain this connection with. It’s not just one place, it’s the entire universe. And I think I think people tend to forget about that, that what you’re connecting with is this amazing power of the universe that we all have. It’s not it’s not that we’re separate from it. We’re part of it. It’s it’s like they say it’s like a thimble of water floating in the ocean. It flips over and it’s the same but different, you know. So anyway, yeah, that but that’s my advice on not is be easy with it and really feel it and not no don’t worry about the numbers. The numbers take care of themselves be creative, good in encounters that don’t slide backwards. Right. That actually stay where they’re supposed to. But but when I did it, believe it or not, we didn’t. When I first started, we went from the introduction class straight to Monday night class, which right now is like the advanced class. There was no in there was no beginner class, there is no sort of intermediate class. So I was literally thrown to the wolves. Here you go. Here’s this text. How to pronounce it. I don’t know. Oscar Bouchet, who at the time was lower level, like, I’m not asking him anything. So so I had to learn it just like everyone else. I had to learn how to pronounce things and where I was, where I was last. I sort of alluded to that earlier, but it was the connection I felt with the practice and the differences that it immediately made in my life. It wasn’t sort of I’m sure anyone who’s really ever practiced and really put some effort into it will tell you there has been an immediate result. And it was it was that particular part of my life. Lost or not, I felt one that I was somewhere where I belonged. I was connected to it and it sort of became a quest for me. I was going to learn how to do this, right, because. Because that’s why I just set my mind to it. And I’ve since obviously let go of that, that whole thing, because it really does become part of your life and you really connect to it. But that the importance of just feeling that sangha an occasionally someone we go know, flip the page, you know, and tell you where to go. So that’s really how these other classes came into being, is like, do you think we could put this class together and help people out? Okay, fine. Yeah. So, but what’s really weird to me and, and the cool part about the old space, it was, I’ll just tell you this real quick story. When I was younger, I saw Nirvana play there. It used to be a rock venue. OC The very place I saw Kurt Cobain was where my seat was, and it was from that space that my teacher first taught me, the introduction to Tibetan Buddhism that I now teach. So all this is a big circle. So I went there seeking nirvana, and that’s a true story. I saw Nirvana. I saw Green Day Dinosaur Junior. They opened for Dinosaur Junior, who was a larger band at that time and had just some really odd things, you know. And so the whole place was really cool. But that the, the thing about it is, is and I tell everyone when they’re in the intro class, I too walked up those stairs, sat down on a cushion and swore I’d never come back because it hurt. And I was so lost and didn’t know. And I think I was lost emotionally. I know I was. And you know, you put some effort into it and you carry on with it and it turns out okay and not everyone’s going to stick with it for 20, 30 years. But that seed is planted maybe your next lifetime, maybe later on in your life. But it’s interesting to be able to tell them, Yeah, I understand because I do understand. I wasn’t born into it. I, you know, walked along this path and went through the hardships and everything that goes along with it. And I’m still going through those hardships. But it’s okay. I’ve learned to let go of that. It is just to go through that, go down the path, just keep following it, not blindly, but to keep following it. There’s a rock in the way. Okay, go around the rock, you know. And I think everybody gets caught up in being perfect with it. There’s no such thing as perfect. Perfect is a continually my my term I use for it is liquid architecture it’s constantly changing everyone’s view of perfection. Don’t worry about being perfect just as you are. You’re perfect. Let go of it. Let go your own misconception about yourself if if you weren’t supposed to be connected to the Dharma. That’s the other thing I hear. I’m not worthy enough to practice the Dharma than that I hear in Wayne’s World. We’re not worthy, right? No, you are worthy. If you weren’t worthy, you would not be connected to your karma, wouldn’t let you be so that’s the other thing. I’ve talked to people about it a lot lately. I’m not sure why lately, but either way it’s a misconception you’re practicing for the benefit of others. They’re not asking if you’re perfect. They’re asking you if you’re practicing for them. That’s all. So that that’s what I think you should take out of that as a Dharma. Yeah, that’s beautiful.

Relationships

One of the things that’s really cool about being a practitioner and having a wife is a practitioner. You can be brutally honest with each other. Like, I don’t like that. You need to not do that again, you know, that kind of thing and not be so offended by someone saying that. Hmm. One of the things that she’s really good at is telling me when I have to slow down, when I have to stop that I’m doing too much. You’re spending too much time with students, you know, things like that, which is true. Like, you know, that’s what we do. But on the other hand, arguments there’s I would say, much less argument. You sort of learn to let go of things. The house maybe isn’t as clean as you thought it should be at one point in your life. Now it’s like the walls are still standing. We’re good. You know? The intimacy on an intimate level. I think being open to each other is very, very much higher than just a standard relationship because your hearts are open to each other, not just your, you know, your body, but your your heart, mind and body. And so that relationship. You know, she she doesn’t have to constantly be holding my hand to know I love her. Then we’ll sit and we still go to movies and we’ll hold hands and all that stuff. We’ve been together a long time. We’ve been together ten or 11 years now. We have a mixed family. Hers and mine together, you know. And so the other thing, too, is how you deal with kids. Our daughter came out last year as being gay, and one of her biggest fears was that, you know, she’d be kicked out of the house. She was really afraid of that because she knew parents that were. And she was thoroughly surprised by her reaction. Okay. That’s cool. You know, and and I think back to who I was before becoming Buddhist, and I don’t know that I would have reacted the same. I grew up I was very bigoted, very homophobic. And Buddhism has taught me to let go of all that because there’s no need for it, really. And so now, instead of having a negative reaction is like, okay, what, what can we do to help you? You know, you’re always safe here. You know you’re always safe. And it’s not just her. Even at even at my shop, there’s a I don’t know if you notice, there’s a we had a p flag, but it’s like the the trans lesbian gay flag is a there’s a sticker on the window to let them know that it is a safe place and it is there. We don’t judge you when you come in there and when you talk about how the practice changes, someone just in an a personal level, that’s part of that. Because now you realize these are people you’re dealing with and not just the number. It’s not just a car. These people have feelings. You know, I still feel terribly bad when I tell someone, hey, you have to spend a thousand bucks on your car. How would I feel if I had to spend a thousand bucks on my car? That hurts, you know, and you start to feel more. And I think people I think people really resonate with that and they actually feel that. But going back to the the personal relationship, as far as, you know, having a practitioner’s, a wife or a girlfriend or whichever, it helps them to understand because in a normal relationship, we’re going to say normal because I’m going to go back to what I was before. If you disappeared for a couple nights a week, you’re probably at a bar, you know. And so now if I disappear for a couple nights a week, my wife knows exactly where I am and she joins in those practices as well. And there’s some practices we do together, some that we do separately. Having that knowledge that, you know, you’re working together but separately for a greater good, it’s a really cool feeling. You know, it’s like I described, we were, you know, we finished an hour together about not that. How do you describe that? How do you share that other than to be with someone you know, you go home to your girlfriend. Hey, guess what I did. It was really cool. Okay, that’s really cool. But when someone does a practice with you, they have that same open feeling, that same connectedness. I’m not saying it won’t work to have a non-practicing other half, but at the same time there’s a lot of benefits. There are some downfalls to it too, because then they start comparing themselves to you and vice versa. You can’t do that. We talked about that a little bit too. You can’t compare yourself to someone else on the path, even if it’s your wife or your husband, right? So that tends to get a little weird too. And becoming a lama, that’s a whole different deal. We had to have a very frank discussion before I agreed to it because there’s a lot of responsibility and being a lama, you have students, you have responsibilities that go over to my own teacher still, which requires a lot more time and some marriages don’t survive that. And so it was right up front, this is what’s going to happen if you’re not okay with it. I’m just going to continue being a practitioner. She was, of course, okay with that and continues to be a great support and like any control, she’s my other half. She she supports all of this stuff that I do. And it’s nice to know that I can just sort of come home and I can talk about Dharma without someone just glazing over and they understand what I’m talking about and the different experiences I’m sure you’ve experienced sort of metaphysical things, let’s just put it that way. And, and someone who is not spiritual or not practicing a spiritual path would look at you and shake their head and go, okay, you’re out there, dude. No, she in fact, she has better experiences. And I think so. Anyway, that’s how that’s how I would describe that.

Retreats

Retreats are interesting and retreat should always be done under the tutelage of your teacher because they’ve gone through it. They know how to set it up, how to structure it. Retreats generally are very structured. We’re talking you get up at a certain time every morning. You have so much time for tea, whatever, you know, and then it’s into practice. So it’s very structured throughout the day. There’s there’s periods of practice, there’s periods of rest, there’s periods of contemplation and meditation. And and this goes on throughout the whole day. So, one, it’s structured, two in in this world we are so busy all the time. I thought I heard my cell phone go off. I’m not going to worry about it right now. But if if you’re in retreat, you don’t have your cell phone, you don’t have your television, you don’t have a radio, you’re in retreat. You’re doing nothing but practice. It allows us to let go of the outside world and to focus strictly on practice as as you maintain that focus and that structure. It starts to affect you spiritually where like I was explaining before you start to become connected to the practice, right? It’s that connection that you’re really looking for. It’s difficult to wake up every morning at home, not in retreat, do the practice, hurry through the practice so you can get to work on time, so on and so forth. In retreat, you’re worried about nothing but practice. And as you let go the outside world and you let go of these layers that we put on our put upon ourselves, you start to have a deeper connection with the practice. You get more of it done and you’re not rushing through it. You’re going to start a sort of just sort of rhythmic pace and you’ll find your own pace for it as you go through, whether it’s mantras or whether it’s module accumulation, whatever you’re doing, you’ll find a certain pattern in it as you go through that. You know, if you can do it for a week, great. If you can do it for three days or one day, that’s great too. But the idea is to let go of the outside world. What would it be like to be in a monastery? I can tell you how that is, too, because in Nepal we go visit a monastery. Yes. You hear up at 5 a.m., you’re up at five. You do your prostration, you set, you do your practice. Have another break, go back, do more practice. It’s exactly the same thing. There’s a reason why that monastic community exists is because that’s all they’re focusing on. It gives you a taste of how the monastic community is, but it also helps you to still live in this world. Going back to that, living in both worlds, things that we’re in. So when you do retreat, that’s why it’s important, is because you you can escape where everyone. Oh, I practice. No, you don’t. You’re driving in your car, you’re hurting through it in the morning so you can suck down your coffee and go to work the year you cut it off right when you leave. Whereas in retreat you maintain that all day long and so you that still just sort of constantly flowing all day long. Whereas if you’re doing nine under in the morning. Trust me, I did an under in the morning. I know what it’s like. You do. You tend to hurry through it. You want to get as much done as you can before you have to go to work. And you know, if you’re alarm’s late, you end up sitting 5 minutes on your seat doing some money, mantras of leaving, you know. So. And don’t get me wrong, I. I don’t practice three or 4 hours a day every day. I don’t do that. You know, I’m lucky if I practice an hour a day other than the prescribed classes that we have, you know. So don’t be so hard on yourself. And I think I think that the retreat allows us to be a little easier on ourselves. You know, we eat different food. We we have contact with just ourselves and the practice itself. And we become immersed in it, I think is really why I think the practice of of retreat is so important. Retreat is just how it sounds. The first time I told them I was going on our retreat. Oh, where are you going? Well, then, like in myself, in this little room. Why are you doing that? That’s crazy. You go with a bunch of people? No. But the solitary retreat is. Is probably the best prescribed method of truly immersing yourself in the Dharma and the practice. And it’s not just natural. You do retreat on it. You do retreat in all sorts of different things. And there are open and closed retreats, some retreats. You’re literally locked in a room for a week. Others, you can come and go freely, but still maintain, you know, the practice. And you don’t you don’t get involved with the outside world, the intense retreats. You don’t even talk to a person. They leave your food outside your door and that’s it. That’s your contact with the outside world. Others, you come and go as you please, but still sort of maintain the space to do it. So it just depends on what kind of retreat you’re doing. But if you can, I would definitely recommend doing retreat, get get that done. And really get the connection made and see what it’s like to be by yourself. I think we’re so used to having everything around us, you know, it goes back to when we were talking about going hiking up in the woods, you know, it’s the same sort of thing. It’s still a retreat, but it’s a different type of retreat. Okay.

Sangha

Especially in this day and age, because we’re going through a really weird time right now, you know, with COVID and everything. And I’m not sure how everyone else is going through. We haven’t really met as a sangha. Yeah, two and a half years, almost. It was really weird because the Thursday before everything shut down, we had everything in place because we decided we were going to broadcast to. We have some members that are in southern Utah actually down by St George. We decided we started broadcasting, so we had all the stuff in place. Then they said, Hey, we’re shutting down. So all that was in place and we all had to figure out how to use Zoom and maybe Zoom saved the Sangha and more people attend now than even when we were alive. Because I think it’s you know, if you think about coming here, you have to drive here. For example, I live about 2 minutes from where the shop is, right? So I had to drive all the way up here, fill all the water bottles, put everything together, go through teachings, take it all back down and drive back home. That’s a that’s another hour of your time. That being said, there there is something lost when there’s not the interpersonal relationship. Teaching on Zoom is tremendously difficult. It’s I equate it to like what Mr. Rogers went through. You know, I always wondered how Mr. Rogers felt and now I know because you’re teaching on Zoom and, you know, people are sitting there staring at you, listening to you, but you can’t you don’t get that. In fact, we’ve normally I’ll do the introduction class introduction to Buddhism. The last one I did took me eight weeks to do. Normally it’s like a six week class, but it took longer because it would just take longer to do everything. So I told them, I’m not doing it on Zoom, I’m waiting till we reopen. So hopefully around April we’ll we’ll have that again. But the target supports each other and in a lot of different ways. One, one, we support the teacher, you know, and we’re always there for each other. If someone calls and says, hey, I need something, okay, there’s there’s the physical way. Someone needs their car fixed. Okay? They find me. But other there’s all sorts of other ways. One is emotional support. When you lose someone behind you as a gentleman, it’s the only person we lost during this whole, uh, epidemic, pandemic, I should say. And he died of cancer, so. But we all supported him and his family, and through. Through his death. But we all know we’re all still there all the time. You know what I mean? Just knowing that we’re all there, even if it is on Zoom online, I think really adds to that. And the emotional part of all of this has been tremendous on everybody. We all know someone who who died from COVID or at least, you know, real close to someone we know. My wife is in our and she knows people personally who’s died from it. And just knowing that there’s that sort of support if if it’s needed, I think is a huge thing as we go through and continue to go through this. Hopefully we’re about done with it because I’m like, Yeah, but, but I’m getting burnt out on video stuff too, you know, and, and that’s other people have told me that too. But without that we wouldn’t be what would we have done? You know, think if it was ten years ago in one of our cell phones, maybe, maybe once a week, figure out how to do something televised, so to speak. So but as the song it evolves, it’s really interesting because like we talked about earlier there, there are different levels of song and how they support what’s really interesting. If you ever get a chance, go to a Thai temple. Okay? Especially during one of the big festivals, because the people that support the Thai temples are amazing and these businessmen will show up and outside. They’ve got a guy with a microphone and he’ll say exactly what you donated. They’re smart because the next guy hears, Okay, Mr. So-and-so donated 500. I’m going to donate 550, right? Because it’s a good thing because they build merit that way and they know that this small community try to try to explain that to someone who is not part of the Thai community and see how well that goes. You know, you’re building merit. Okay? So there’s some differences between the different types of songs and it just depends on what it is. But we we occasionally do have festivals where we invite the general public. We have different relics, relics from different teachers. We’ll put them out on display sometimes. We probably have one of the largest relic collections on this side of the Mississippi. Actually, and I don’t know if you know, but there’s there’s two sets of you see the text on the left and the right side of the main shrine. That’s that’s the conduit and tender. They’re really, really rare. So it’s the teachings of the Buddha and then the commentary and those teachings. And then aside the other table are the the luncheon meeting and the commentary on that. So very rare to have all those things. So talk about support, those simple from blessing, but we have the blessings and support of our main mother, Gilbert, in Kathmandu. So that’s all still part of the song and how that goes down. But going back to the last song and how we all had to interact with each other, it’s like outside of here, we’ll go do stuff sometimes, maybe have dinner, maybe like, I don’t know, we’ll go sometimes, go on a bike. I don’t know, a boat trip for a day in a lake or something like that. Just see, get together as a group where it’s not so much, you know, but it’s different when you come in here because then you’re all dressed, dressed differently and you’re, you’re practicing and it’s a different feeling and it’s more like a family than anything. So but but song it song, it’s really hard to describe because I think everyone describes it differently and how they feel. I would say family, I would say support. No one can do all this alone. You know what I mean? We’re all responsible for all this. I didn’t put all this stuff about myself. And so hopefully this will be passed on to a new generation of song who will also appreciate it. So going back to what we were talking about earlier, about how the the Tibetans brought all this stuff, that’s all part of sangha. And as you look at the three jewels, sometimes you forget about that part of it. But really without the song that the teachings would have gone nowhere. They would have been stuck somewhere and probably have died. And even the very simple teaching of sitting and letting go, you know, anyone can do that. But but that’s all, you know, part of different levels of sangha, which is better than the other. Not going to say anyone’s more better than the other. More better. He Oh, I didn’t go to college, which is better than the other. So if you have if you have the very simple a practitioner comes in and tries to develop their their compassionate nature is no better or no worse than myself as a lama or any of the Rinpoche has come. When you take refuge, one of the things you talk about is not the robe sangha. You don’t you don’t judge them. Even the even the hermit addressed in the raggedy clothes, still a jewel of sangha, because it really is the jewel and people we rely on the the Lama Buddha, Dharma Sangha. But really the song is the lifeblood of it. And it’s not just monetary, it’s that simple support, the simple love that we all share, but not just here. It’s as we go out and it doesn’t have to be in a group. It’s just that sangha and that sangha even sends those maybe little tendrils out of loving kindness. Can other people feel it? Of course they can. So you can get really deep with that. You can get really simple. But the fact of the matter is, the song is that precious jewel and we support each other and that’s just how it’s been. We were talking the other day, we had a we had a meeting about, you know, protocol with this Rinpoche coming. And some of the people had never seen and never seen or other in our own. And they’re like, Well, how much do I give my that? The teachings are priceless. You know, make make your offering something that that hurts a little bit. Don’t go without food. But you know, if if you got 20 bucks and, you know, make it worth it and and it goes with the song a two and it’s not all monetary, by all means. I mean, it’s it’s the support and what they help with and it, you know, and it doesn’t matter what you do as long as you’re part of it. And I think that the community is as far as being part of the sangha, not only do you feel a connection, but it’s like a home. You have to remember that you’re taking refuge in the Buddha Dharma Sangha, which is also refuge in every one that’s around you. What does that mean? Well, if it’s raining, you run under some cover. That’s refuge. It’s a very bad time in your life. You surround yourself with your sangha and they can help you through that in one way or another. We’re we’re blessed. We have counselors and and doctors and also, you know, all sorts of different people are part of this. I I’m sure you’ve seen that word gone and it and it’s and they don’t you know it the sangha is just a beautiful thing because it really is a support mechanism for all of it. And it sort of goes up the ladder that ultimately we support the teachings of the Buddha. And that’s that’s really the important thing. And we’re the embodiment of the Buddhist teaching, the Buddhist teachings. And that’s the other thing I think a lot of people lose sight of the really the sangha is the result of what the Buddha taught 2600 years ago. And so, you know, like I said, Zoom is really cool, seminars are really cool, but really the Sangha and that connection with the song, it helps. It’s a support system. It’s like a life support system for the practice. It’s much easier to accumulate and under oh, by the way, in a group setting, if you got 20 people accumulating the same thing, it goes much faster. There are a little secret that I shouldn’t have, but. But anyway, so it’s part of that, you know, and you can the the thing about the Dharma is you can make it as heavy or as light as you want it to be. My recommendation is to make it light and let that your heart be light with it. Don’t get caught up in the politics. Don’t get caught up in gossip. Don’t get caught up in anything that’s not productive or compliant with what the Buddha taught. And I think that’s easier said than done, by the way. But I think if we follow that, we’ll be better as a song and and you know, that the Dharma will continue to grow.

Spiritually

So this goes back to sort of when I first started to study that barbarism, because that’s when I started to view myself as being spiritual, because I started to feel like like I told you the ball pit story with the kids. Right. And I felt, yeah, there’s got to be something with this kids. They’re all getting along and everything’s good. Then I started to be spiritual. Okay? Maybe I started to watch the sunrise again. And you get to a certain point, you’re like, Okay, I’m sort of stuck here. And I looked at other things, behavior, and I like I even looked at the Wiccan stuff just to see how that wasn’t. It all seemed just a little bit too out there. And of course, they’re very spiritual and they’re very kind. But I think you get to a certain point and that stops that you sort of come to a dead end. Okay. To go beyond that, there has to be a path that you go down. The nice thing about any religion and I know we’re talking religion versus spirituality now, but religion, if you want to put it in that category and you want to sort of box it in is you can say, okay, this path, let’s say Christianity, this is what Jesus thought, this is how you attain this. The Buddha thought sort of in the same way, this is how you do this. But there’s a lot more different ways to achieve it in Buddhism than strict in Christianity. Spirituality, I think, makes us feel good, but not maybe so much for the benefit of others. Whereas Buddhism. Yes, it does make you feel good, but it’s more for the benefit of others. And it’s sort of a circular thing that keeps itself going because as you work for the benefit of others, your own, your own spirituality reconnects and expands, if that makes sense. The Buddha taught these things 2600 years ago and they’ve been very effective from that time until now. If if you do what he prescribes, it’s like a it’s like a doctor. You go to the doctor, Hey, I’m sick. And he gives you a prescription. And what the Buddha taught was a prescription on how to achieve that. And so these are the main differences between spirituality, I think, and religion. But we’re still using that box of religion. We’re just going to use it as a box, because I think that lets us that lets us sort of say, okay, this is what’s in here. This is what the direction we’re going is. And this is the way we need to keep going. Spirituality, I think a lot of times you just sort of get to a certain you start flailing around. And I think sometimes it can backfire. I think a lot of times it leads to, I don’t know, illicit drug use. I’ve heard, you know, and and I’m not saying everyone, don’t get me wrong, but, you know, you can you can have all the crystals you want. You can have all the sound baths you want, the Tibetan bowls, all those good things. Ultimately, they’ll help you be more spiritual. Are they going to help you to really, truly expand into who you are? I think it gives you tastes of it where you get these little glimpses of who you really are, whereas Buddhism and and every other religion. But primarily we’re going to talk Buddhism because that’s what I do. But I think that really helps us to not to be in tune with it more, not just to have glimpses, but to be have that sort of be like a it’s almost like a river that flows through your life. And as you follow that, then you can go, okay, this is easier to let go of. This is how I feel. This is how I’m more in touch with with people. And like I said before, it’s not about just feeling good. It’s painful too. But like everyone has talked about it scientifically, we’ve talked about how our attitudes change and how our minds change and our physical emotions change. What I mean by physical emotions is, is how we deal with with different things like love, grief, all those sort of things. So our physical manifestation of those things changes and our reaction to those things changes as they’ve done studies with the mind during meditation and cause different things to happen during meditation, they’ve learned that the brain reacts differently than someone who has not practiced those things. So as far as those two things, that’s that’s how you can look at it is one, it’s like spirituality, okay? That’s a taste. And the actual practice of any religion is actually the guts of it. The the mechanics of it, so to speak, is really how to expound on that and to progress on that path rather than just, you know, it’s almost like some like swimming in the kiddy pool to begin with. That’s that spirituality and diving off the high dove. That’s religion when you do it, correct? Because you’re going to go to the bottom. But it but when you get to the bottom, you find the most amazing, wondrous things.

The Buddhist Path

The path that the Buddha laid down is very, very simple, but it’s also very complicated. What he really taught was to let go, to clear again. Did you remember His Holiness the 17th Karmapa? They will all tell you the same thing when you get done with all the practices. It’s simply sitting and letting go. What happens when you let go? Your heart opens. When your heart opens, you start to feel more. When you feel more, you connect with your own intrinsic nature, your own Buddha nature, which is inherent with all of us. So when people ask me what the big difference is between this religion and any other religion, I think it’s just the simple approach. My own feeling about other religions is they all teach the same thing. If you let them, they all teach you to have loving kindness. They all teach you to have compassion, even. Anton LaVey, the Satanic Church, taught the same thing. You treat men how they should be treated. I’ve dealt with many religious leaders. I visited with several imams. They all teach us the same thing as well, that you treat your neighbor as a guest or you treat someone that’s coming in to visit you as a guest. Not a foreigner, not, you know, you always treat them with loving kindness and respect. And I think that’s a universal language and it’s really just how we go about doing it. One of the things about Vajrayana Buddhism is we’re taught and we teach others to try to put ourselves before someone else, let others have, you know, let them be enlightened first, give you work for the benefit of others. And I think that gives us a wonderful opportunity to let go of who we think we are, because in the process of helping someone else, in the process of praying for someone else, we completely let go of who we think we are just to have an open heart to do it correctly. It’s very interesting. The last couple of years we’ve dealt with this virus in the United States alone. There have been well over 800,000 people die and one of the you know, one of the things you look at is how do you feel for these people? How do you feel what they’re going through? You realize that you may be one of them and what will you be going through? We all have gone through this and we’re all traumatized by it because we spent the last 24 months or so wondering if we’re next. Really, we’re going to be next. We’re all going to die. And I think the more we prepare for that, the better off we’re going to be. It’s often said that as we die, the easier it is for us to let go of life itself, the better that that death will be. You look at the great masters, they sit and just let go and they’re gone. Whereas people who are grasping on to, you know, maybe everything they own, every single hair in your head. I want it all. You can’t take anything with you so that that peace in dying is one of the other ultimate aspects of Tibetan Buddhism, is the ability to let go of things. So letting go as the Buddha taught, grasping even at our own end and all of our stuff, let go. You know, they a lot of the the really higher impulses will have these beautiful fine houses and these really beautiful golden statues. And they’ll say, what about all this gold and beautiful things you have? Even the is holiness the Dalai Lama has a Rolex watch and they ideas is they’re not attached to them you can have fine things just don’t be attached to it because you don’t get to take anything with you. Right. So these are sort of sort of some things that I’ve learned going down this path. And when I was younger, I had a lot of anger issues. There’s some history there I don’t want to go into. But I was a big, angry kid. I played football. That was how I got part of my aggression out. And as I got older, it didn’t quite work out that way. So Tantra or Tibetan Buddhism, Vajrayana or whatever you want to call it, sort of teaches you to take that energy and to turn it into something productive instead of destructive. And it’s helped me to let go of all of those things that I was carrying around in all that pain that was causing that that anger and suffering on my own part and that of others. And so there’s a lot to it and it’s really a lot deeper. And the funny thing my teacher talks about is their dharma is like $1,000,000,000 industry, right? And there’s all these books and you can see all the books. So you go down to Barnes and Noble. If and if anyone actually learned anything from those books, there would be a lot more enlightened people. Right. The problem with it is, is we all have this idea of what we think, enlightenment is, myself included, when in reality it’s simply letting go of it all. The Buddha didn’t become enlightened by by studying a lot of scriptures, by doing anything other than sitting on the bloody tree, being okay with who he was, accepting what he’d been through in the hundred lifetimes he’d been through and letting go and finally coming face to face with his own demons. And that’s really the point of it all. That’s that’s what true enlightenment is, I believe, is being okay with who you are and what you’ve been through and you’re learning how to use utilize that into a usable, you know, a usable construct that you can share with people and to help them along their path as well. One of the things we have done in the past is we sponsored like some of the halfway not necessarily halfway houses, but the recovery treatment centers that have a lot of students come in. And several of the the students from there have actually come on to be regular sangha members and it’s really helped their life as well. The 12 step recovery program, guess what? It’s based off of Buddhism. So, you know, it is not so different. So that’s that’s life and that’s, you know, really how that works. The practice itself is really what’s important and how you get to it. There are 84,000 different ways to practice. That’s what the Buddha taught, because each one of us has a different path. We’re going to go on. I tell my students all the time, Don’t compare yourself to others because it’s your path, not theirs. They may be further along their path. Maybe they got a different obstacle they have to work through this lifetime. Who knows? Maybe you work through the obstacle you have. Boom. That’s all you need and you’re done. You don’t have to come back anymore unless you’ve taken the bodhisattvas, which of course say you’re coming back anyway. You don’t get a choice. And hopefully you really think about that vow. That vow of you know, being here for others, working for the benefit of others, putting yourself below others. And really what that entails, the basic bodhisattva vow is, you know, sentient beings are numberless and my delusions are inexhaustible and that the Buddha taught the perfect way of getting through those things. And so you take all those things into consideration and you let go once again, like I said before, if who you thought you were because who you thought you were is based on different perceptions and different projections. Projection, I think, is an interesting and it’s also a very destructive thing that we all do. Within the first 15 seconds of meeting someone we automatically have a projected what we think of them on our own selves when in reality we don’t have enough information to truly understand who they are. One of my friends says, and this is a very good quote We don’t know their story. You don’t know anyone story when you first meet them. And so I think it’s very important that when you get to know someone, that you really find what their story is. They may not look like what you think is a nice person when in reality they may be the nicest person I’ve ever met. I run into this all the time. I was I was I was at Home Depot the other day. Yeah. It was snowing. Right. And so this little, little man had this roll of toilet paper. Am I here? Let me help you. That is. Okay, hold on. So he gets in the car, locks the car, and then through the rolls the window down and says, okay, you can help them. Okay. Okay. I’m scary looking. All right, but it’s perception, right? So he had no idea. Malama and most people don’t write. So this is a perfect example of of our projection of how we put that on people. And in reality, what is reality, you know, is our projection based on color or race or whether someone’s heterosexual or homosexual, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And all those things really don’t matter. You know, the Buddha was asked about God and what was his answer by God? Don’t worry about that. Worry about yourself. And and really even the Christian religion tells you that, that ultimately you are responsible for your own actions. It’s interesting about the teachings of Christ and the teachings of the Buddha and how close they are to each other and how much they mirror each other. The Buddha said, or excuse me, Jesus said, What you saw, you will reap. We know that is karma, you know, and you start looking at karma is an interesting thing. It is so especially in this day and age, with all the mystical new age people that throw that around. If you knew how karma really existed and how it really acted, my own understanding is, is a microcosm of what I understand of the big the big picture. But it’s like the butterfly wing effect. The smallest action you do now has a huge reaction. Maybe lifetimes from now is when the end result of that will come. It’d be cool if, like John Lennon said, you had instant karma, right? Every time you did something bad, something bad, it happened to you. It doesn’t work like that, but there’s a few interesting things that you have to overcome. I think with Buddhism, one of them is let going of who you thought you were because who you think you were or are is not truly who you really are. So doing those practices and really getting in touch with who I really am and who I always was, I think that’s one of the the fallacies a lot of people get into it that it’s going to change your life. No, it’s not going to change your life. You’re going to change your life using the methods that the Buddha prescribed. And it’s really quite beautiful because as we start to become more open with each other, our interactions with people, no matter whether they’re a customer, a student or even, you know, like an interviewer, that you become closer to them in a real way, not a fake way, where you’re always smiling and everything is happy. The other big fallacy I think about Buddhism in general is that it’s all peace and love and incense and flowers, when in fact it’s a lot of heartbreak, it’s a lot of tears. And if if you’re doing Tibetan Buddhist practice and you haven’t set in your kitchen and cried your eyes out, you’re not doing it right. You should be open to what’s going on in the world. This is why we meditate with our eyes open. The eyes are the window to the soul. I think even Shakespeare said that. But in lights it lets the light into your heart so your heart can open. One of my favorite statues is a statue of a lady, and she’s in a yoga posture, but she’s cracked. And when it lights up, the light shines out from her. I think you may have seen that, and I think that’s really how our own hearts are. They have to crack a little bit for that light to start shining out to others. This is really how we’re supposed to be. It’s it’s looking at each other, accepting how each other is without judgment. And I think that’s, that’s the real, um, I think definition of love is dealing with someone and being with someone without judgment. Meaning like a mirror. So, but, but the interesting thing about it is, is, is I think that the, the part about practicing for the benefit of others, I think that’s something that really rang with me. It rang true. Like instead of just, you know, what’s good for me is like, how can I serve others? And, and that helped in as, as my own mind and heart opened. That became the main focus. And it felt much, much better and it felt more and more real because I think, you know, you get to the point where you fake it till you make it type thing. And I think there’s a certain degree of that. Remember, she is teacher used to tell him, I didn’t ask you to understand it. I said to do it. And I still tell students that today, just do it. And a lot of what you need to understand, you’ll understand through the practice that I that I think yeah I would emphasize that very much so because there’s a certain understanding and wisdom that comes from doing the practice that’s not available in a book. It’s not available even on YouTube. I like it cracks me up when I see impairments done on YouTube. It’s like, Oh no, that you can get some of it, but you’re not going to get the full benefit is as if you had a teacher do it. So anyway, that’s you know, I’m glad that YouTube is there and I’m glad that that that people are able to be exposed to the Dharma in whatever way they can. But ultimately, to really practice it, you need a teacher and a direct path to fully understand it. And so, you know, that’s unfortunately or fortunately that that’s the truth of the matter. And there’s no way around that. But and dig in, dig your closet in the head and and just go and just go with it and you’ll understand. You’ll understand the benefits of it. Yeah, this was a weekly occurrence. So every week I got to come study the oversea teachings from Rinpoche and at the same time, you start to develop a connection with the teacher. And what is that connection that he knows? He gets to know what you’re doing and how you’re doing it, where you are, where you are at, on the path, and what your progress is and what you may need to help you progress down the path in in a how efficient way because there’s a lot of inefficient ways you can go down the path. Right. And as you start to develop that relationship with your teacher, it’s a relationship of trust and he has to trust you that you’re doing the right thing. And you are you have to trust him that that he’s doing the right thing as well. I think that’s a difficult thing because unlike other religions where the leaders all seem very sort of out and they maybe read from a certain text and you follow that text, the teacher himself in Tibetan Buddhism is that jewel and is that sort of conduit of the lineage. So as we talk about the lineage, it goes from the Buddha on down to your present teacher, and that there’s not that continual line that is considered a broken lineage and the teachings are not true. So the student teacher relationship depends on one what he was taught and how he teaches it to you. And there are a lot of different ways, I’m sure, you know, you’ve gone through different teachings and at what one student may understand as one way or another will understand another way. So it’s very important to always have that that true connection with your teacher. And you can you can see a lot of different teachers. You can go to all the seminars you want, but until you actually have a teacher set you down to give, you pointed out instructions, the nature of mind, really, all the you know, all the different things that are very important to know, like what your lineage is. The nature of my teachings, as pointed out instructions, all those things should be done directly from teacher to student. And you sort of have to give a little bit, you know, and it is scary, even from my own viewpoint. I, I, I went through some things in my life where I didn’t trust a whole bunch of people, you know? And it was hard for me to develop that trust. And so now I obviously trust them with my life. And it’s not, it’s not just like it’s really hard to explain because it’s not just here, I’m going to give my soul over to you. It’s a gradual sort of inch by inch, sort of. Okay, here you go. Here’s more. And as you as you become more connected with your teacher, your heart opens more and the two of you connect. And so that’s that’s the best way I can describe that. It’s a very it goes beyond friendship. It there’s a deeper connection, a heart connection as best way I can describe it. So that’s that at least my feelings and my understanding of the student teacher relationship. And you have to be willing to take a chance on things. So in talking about religion and how that all works out, right? So the funny part about it is, is the religion I left you go to church for 3 hours and you go home and you’re not until the next Sunday night. That matters too long. I don’t want to do that. Right. Is they now some of the and now so my schedule right now is Sunday we have puja from 1130 to 130. So there’s a couple hours Monday I will have class from 7 to 9 p.m.. Tuesday I have another class from 7 to 9 p.m.. Thursday I was the class from 7 to 9 p.m. that I teach and then three times pretty much free. So all that time like, oh, it’s too much time. But here’s the difference in it. One read Buddhism. Well, I don’t know about Buddhism in general because I don’t practice anything else but Tibetan Buddhism. But you’re more involved on a personal level. It’s not someone telling you what to do. You go do it and then see what happens, what I mean by that is one. So like the under the narrow is your own sort of personal practice. And as as you go through that purification process, the building a mirror, you understand it sort of builds. It’s it’s like it’s like preparing ground for building a house almost. Okay. So you have to get the plow, the field, and then you start to build the foundation. As you start to go through the practice, you can see that all the other practices, including Puja, really are built on that same sort of foundation. So it’s a constant learning process that you yourself are part of. How quick you learn is how much you’re involved with it. The more you put yourself into it, the more you’re going to get out of it. I’ve heard from students all the time when they say, Well, it doesn’t work. Are you doing it? No, but it doesn’t work. If you don’t do it, it won’t work. I’m thoroughly convinced that any religion is the same way. If you don’t do it, it won’t work. I hear all the time too. But I don’t like organized religion. Okay, so you get up in the morning, you brush your teeth, you take a shower, you hop in your car, you stick the key, and you drive to work on the way to work. You stop and get your coffee almost every morning, I guarantee you. Guess what? That’s religion. Whenever you do something religiously, that’s a religion. So you have to separate the two words out. Really look at what the word religion means and being religious or religiously, it’s really sort of a habit. But Tibetan Buddhism is I’ve been asked this a lot is it a religion? Is it a philosophy? What is it? It’s a religion. It’s a philosophy and it’s a way of life. As we look at the different details, I think like we were talking earlier, the degrees throw people off well, how can you pray to so many deities on the Buddha said there wasn’t a god hang on he’s one of the deities actually represents part of our own nature and as we learn to connect with that nature, it helps us to move further along the path toward it might. That’s the easy way of putting it. So like Chin Razi here, he helps us to get re re in what’s the word reconnected. Okay, that’ll work with our own innate compassionate nature. Why? Because as we do the practice of ten resi, it’s not like ten raises separate from us. It’s. It’s really just an archetype of what’s already inside of us. So that everyone goes, Yeah, well, what about the Ralph case? The Ralph guys are also very compassionate as well. But but ten resi is probably the best example. If, if you need to develop compassion in your heart, you’re recourse. Assume the identity or the you know, how how generous he would act. How would he act? Well, we have a perfect example. Look at His Holiness the Dalai Lama. How does he act? He is the very you know, the he is the upper echelon of what we would consider compassionate. And his compassionate nature is a good example for us to follow. So instead of that being so external now it’s an internal thing. And as we see ourselves as Chen Rezai, we’re doing what Chen Chen really would do. We start to open our heart and we start to be have more compassion for those beings around us. And we realize that there are more beings than just us, that there’s these six realms of beings that all suffer in the same way, if not more so as you look at all the different archetypes, the different deities, and our own connection with them and how that all connects, it’s really part of really who we are. It just we are connecting with those and reconnecting with our own innate nature and its you call it whatever you want, you want to call it religion. People sometimes go out hiking, you go out hiking, and you enjoy nature and you breathe in the fresh mountain air. When you’re out. It’s nothing different than that because you’re reconnecting with your own innate nature. We just it’s a different path of doing it. Buddhism is interesting because there are different levels you can practice that you can practice. You could be a lay practitioner, non-Arabs. You can come in here in a set of genes, sweats, whatever. Do some moneys be, you know, work on your own compassionate nature. Just have loving kindness, compassion, joyousness, equanimity. That’s pretty easy. Or you can you can go all the way up to, you know what I’m doing. Most of our sangha does were robes. Most of them are that way. But we also have in non-covid times we, we have a lay practitioner specifically the practice of Chan resident Green Tara. They come in in many on robes, sangha people who really haven’t taken formal refuge come and do that. So there are different ways of doing it. So call it whatever you want it. It’s, you know, you can weigh yourself down with the word religion or you can just say, Hey, I want to be a more loving and kind person, okay? Come, come do some practice out feels. And I’m not the poster child, obviously, but I will tell you that it’s worth a shot to try it. You know anything. His Holiness, the Dalai Lama made a really interesting quote one day they were asking him about religions and what he thought, and I like his answer is that don’t change your religion until you’ve done your own religion 100%. Then if it doesn’t work for you, then change and try something else. And I fully agree with that. But jumping around from religion to religion to religion to see if one works or it makes you feel good. Religion is not about making you feel good. Here’s much more depth to it than that. Religion is about taking control of your own self and guiding your own path and ultimately your own life. I wish I could say that it was magic. Can we have a magic wand and people come in in the last goal? Why do you value statues? I don’t bow to the statues. The statue doesn’t care if about to it or not, nor can it give me anything. But it’s the teachings that that statue represents. That’s what the teachings are. That’s what the religion is. If you want to follow it, call it that. So as far as that, that’s my answer to that kind of thing. And you know it as you go through anything in life, I think it could be a religion. You know, you want to go fly fishing. That’s a religion. All these different things. But take the word religion out of whatever you do and just say, say what it is say is Buddhism, say it’s fishing, say it’s hiking, say it’s driving a car fast. Whatever you do that, that opens your spirit, that opens your mind. Do that, but just leave the word religion off of it. In that way, you will be weighed down by it.