The first teaching, on June 19th, was an introduction to karma and emptiness, using a pen and a 100-yuan note as props to demonstrate how you create your world. The time was too short to go into much detail about how to change your karma, so the lamas settled on teaching about the two simplest ways. Here are my notes from that teaching:
The two fastest and easiest ways to speed up karma:
1. Coffee meditation. Geshe Michael spoke of the four hour commute that he made every day for 15 years--when he got home, he was tired and wanted to relax. Instead of sitting for formal meditation, he used the principle that any time you see someone do something good and feel happy, you get 10% of the good karma. So you can just relax and rejoice, and in that way you collect positive karma in a very easy way.
2. If you do coffee meditation you can do it anywhere, because it's just being happy when other people do good things, like giving away money. But then you have to have a plan what you are going to do with the money you make. If you use it for yourself, you kill the karma. So you have to "reinvest" it. If you do a good coffee meditation the karma comes back and stops. If you give money and then get more as a result, you have to give some of it, say 25%, to someone else. Look for a poor or hungry or unhappy person. Wealthy people are often the most unhappy, so they take them to dinner and pay for it, and don't ask for anything in return. So any time money comes to you, take some and give to other people. If you're wondering if it really works, the company he helped to start is the fastest growing in the history of NYC because they shared the profit with poor people.
Readings for day one (Yoga, Business, Love): http://www.dmes.org/pdfs/Dalian-19-06-08.pdf.
The audio for day one is available at http://www.dmes.org/audiofiles/Dalian-19-06-08.mp3;
Day two: Spiritual Partners--How to Find Them, Keep Them, Reach Them
This was a public talk, so it was a much bigger group than yesterday, maybe about 500 people, packed into the ballroom of a beautiful new hotel. Today was also the first day that the lamas' new CD was available, and also a book that Huang Jin made of last years' partners teachings, and there was a big unruly line of people who wanted autographs during the break. Every one of the tour team had to stand together to keep it moving and under control.
The talk was about how to create the karma to have a partner, to keep them, to be happy with them, and finally how to get them to take you to heaven. It's a beautiful teaching, also very hands-on and practical.
From my notea: How to reach the partner. We said the pen is empty, by itself it's just a stick, and pen comes from our mind. A partner is the same. He or she doesn't have any nature of its own, so they are available to be anything. Right now we see them as normal, because we planted those seeds by treating them as normal. If we treated them as our holy teacher, they would become that.
At the beginning it's just pretend. But then the seeds start to shift and one day you will be sitting with them and you will hear them say something very profound, like they are reading your mind, and you will see they aren't normal. Then they switch back to a normal person, but now you know that they aren't normal.
You have to bring out the angel in your partner by treating them like an angel. Then they will start to bless your mind and guide you until one day you see a halo of light around their head. It's the same as the pen—they are empty.
How do you know your partner is an angel? There are three qualities of angels—they love us very much, like their only child; they know your mind so they know what you need; and they have power to send any form to you to help you. If they love you very much and can read your mind and can take any form they want, they must be emanating as someone right next to you, who can push you further on the path. So your partner must be a holy angel, just waiting for you to figure it out. If you honor them and ask them to come to you as a real angel, they will reveal themselves to you, and you give them power to take you to heaven and teach you to become like them—indestructible body of light, nothing but love in their heart, reaching out to help you.
Readings for day two (Spiritual Partners): http://www.dmes.org/pdfs/Dalian-20-06-08.pdf.
The audio for day two is available at http://www.dmes.org/audiofiles/Dalian-20-06-08.mp3.
Day three was about business--how to succeed and save the world at the same time. They said that in order to run a company you need three things: harmony among the workers and boss, creativity to come up with new ideas, and most important--profitability. All of these come from the seeds you plant in your mind. The seed for creativity comes from being happy when others get good ideas, and the seed for profit comes from giving money to those who need it. After you plant the seeds though, you need to nurture them to make them grow fast. You do that in the who, the what, the when and the how of the way you perform the actions. In the end, it all boils down to how we care for others.
Readings for day three: http://www.dmes.org/pdfs/Dalian-21-06-08.pdf.
The audio for day three is available at http://www.dmes.org/audiofiles/Dalian-21-06-08.mp3.
